


Inside a Dream

by Cyrelia_J



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Bittersweet, Coma, Confrontations, Drama, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Link, Past Brainwashing, Past Relationship(s), Past Torture, Post-Canon, Slow Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-18 01:13:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16985313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/pseuds/Cyrelia_J
Summary: Post Beta canon.After Sarina’s death and Julian’s coma, Julian dreams. With the aid of a device provided by the other augments, Garak is able to bring that world to life in a holosuite, convinced by his lover Parmak to try and bring Julian back against his better judgement. Their relationship broke years ago, and Garak is afraid to risk what he's managed to salvage with his old lover.And then Jack shows up, revealing the real motivations behind his "gift". Garak is forced to confront the truths he didn’t want to face and decide if he’s going to fight for Julian after all. But he isn't the only one with difficult choices as more secrets of Julian's missing years are revealed.“Garak,” he repeats with a nod to himself. “Promise I won’t forget it this time,” Julian says with a self deprecating duck of his head. “Would it be alright to ask for a number? I just... I just have a few questions, maybe a few blanks that you can help me fill in when you have the time..."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, it seems like the Tumblr WIP uploads are never going to end but seriously, these are all being worked on however slowly >_> This one had initially started one way then wildly went another so I'm thankful that the AO3 post will allow me to make some edits for continuity to the beginning chapters. Lots of angst so get your tissues ready and of course, C&C is always welcome :)

_ “Then I'll be watching every breath you take _

_ And if you wanna play a wicked game _

_ 'Cause all I've got to go off _

_ Are lessons from a love song” _

 

Julian first sees the lizard man after he buys his cigarettes. He’s leaning against the brick face of the small gas station convenience store looking for a lighter. That’s when he sees him. He rubs his eyes in the red of the sunset and squints, not sure that he’s seeing him right. His vision isn’t as good as it used to be. The doctors told him that he might never properly recover it after the accident. Julian steps away from the building carefully. His step isn’t as easy as it used to be either.

“Sir?” He asks as the lizard man comes closer to him. Julian doesn’t see a tail. He doesn’t see an elongated face or teeth like an alligator but there’s something distinctly reptilian about his countenance. His skin is grey, if it can properly be called as such. He has scales. He has ridges running around his eyes, down his forehead and a strange dip in the center. His neck- at least what Julian can see of it- is also thick with ridges. Julian wonders if he’s the only one who sees him. Strange, but there isn’t anyone else around right now.

 

The lizard man offers him a lighter and he takes it thankfully. This is it then, he supposes. He’s going to lose the last thing that he thought he still had.  _ Oh who are you kidding, Julian, you haven’t had a grip on reality since you woke up. _ Julian takes a deep pull on the Marlboro Red and thanks him. He expects the man will continue his business inside. Julian wonders if he’s one of those old bastards that smokes Pall Malls. But the lizard man doesn’t go inside. He instead continues standing in front of Julian.

“Right, well thank you again for the lighter um... is there something I can help you with? I’m afraid I don’t have any change for the bus. Check won’t be in til the first and this was hard enough to scrape together you know I...” Julian trails off not knowing why he’s explaining all this to a complete stranger. “You know I walked here myself,” he finishes the explanation with a breath out. He’d rather not be up that part of Brunswick in the dark.

 

“Yes, I’m proud of you, Julian,” the lizard man says to him and it’s such a strange thing to hear from an even stranger man. 

“How do you know my name?” Julian asks. He didn’t give it to him. At least he doesn’t think so. He can usually trust his memories. Most of the time, anyway. 

“You gave me the privilege a long time ago. You might have forgotten. It may have been several lifetimes by some accounts even.” Julian feels his brows knit in confusion at that but he doesn’t question it. He knows that he’ll write it down in his notes tonight. He’s sure he would have remembered such a creature and yet he doesn’t.

“I’m terribly sorry then. There was an accident you see so I... I sometimes forget things. I’m afraid I don’t recall your name. But you know me.” He doesn’t know why but he can see that the lizard man knows him. He hates that he can’t remember. He takes another puff to calm that agitation. “If you say that you know me then I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to believe you.”

 

Julian smiles a bit and the lizard man smiles back at him. It looks like it’s painful. Perhaps the facial muscles aren’t meant to contort in such a fashion? The thought of the lizard man in pain doesn’t quite sit well with him. Julian supposes that’s the doctor they told him he used to be. 

“If it’s painful, then you don’t have to do it. I’ll forgive you,” Julian says trying to lighten the mood. Somehow that only seems to make it worse. It looks like it hurts him more now to smile. Julian doesn’t understand. “Did I say something wrong?” Julian watches as the lizard man draws in a breath before shaking his head. Julian is sure that somehow he’s upset him but he doesn’t quite know how to fix it. Perhaps the smoke is bothering him? Julian attempts to clear the air.

“Never,” he hears spoken in a shaky huff. The lizard man puts a hand on his shoulder, and Julian thinks as he catches a glimpse of his eyes up close they’re just breathtakingly blue. He takes another smoke finding that his own hand is trembling.

 

“You should go home,” the lizard man says giving his shoulder a small squeeze. He’s right of course but it seems a shame now that they’ve just met. Julian doesn’t have a number that he can give him. He’d rather not give the shared line at the place he’s staying now. His room doesn’t have its own phone. They say it’s because some residents need to be monitored too carefully for regression into bad habits. Julian doesn’t think that he can ask the man back either after hours.

“It seems a shame. I mean... I mean you clearly know me Mister... um...” Julian really can’t remember even though he feels that he should be able to.

“No Mister,” is whispered again and Julian is sure that he keeps saying the absolute wrong thing since he’s clearly upsetting him. “Just...” there’s a swallow and another painful smile. “Just Garak,” the lizard man says. Julian promises himself that he’ll write it in his notebook when he gets in. He tries to hurry his smoke along.

 

“Garak,” he repeats with a nod to himself. “Promise I won’t forget it this time,” Julian says with a self deprecating duck of his head. “Would it be alright to ask for a number? I just... I just have a few questions, maybe a few blanks that you can help me fill in when you have the time. Well, I wouldn’t be able to call soon. Not the first yet,” he says laughing softly. He doesn’t know if he ever used to have money, things, family. Julian supposes it’s better that way. They told him when he woke up that he had a wife. Lovely woman they said, named Sarina. But she stopped coming two years before he awoke so he never had a chance to meet her. He was surprised they hadn’t pulled the plug on him honestly and relearning to walk was such a misery but they said he was a special case and so even at fifty two years old, Julian just took that to mean that there was something he was left yet to do.

 

The lizard man, that is Garak, doesn’t answer him and that stare is a bit unsettling but somehow it doesn’t unnerve him the way it ought to.  _ It never did. _ The thought flits into his head and then out again with the breeze. Julian blinks at it staring hard, trying to will his brain to remember. They said it may all come back at once, in spurts, or never anything more than his name and the history that Sarina had provided them. All he knew is that he was a special case and the state would at least see that he didn’t starve. Well God bless the Garden State, he’d thought. Julian wonders if Garak might not have heard him but he sees another shake of that head. He notes that Garak’s hair is white, carefully slicked back. He doesn’t know why Garak’s age hadn’t registered with him. Had he known Garak differently before?

“I’m afraid calling won’t be possible,” Garak says and his voice is a lot more even. Julian’s relieved at that. “But I know where to find you now.”

 

Again, that should concern him but Julian only feels relief at that. The two of them look at each other a moment longer. Julian hopes the next time won’t be quite so awkward. 

“Well that’s ah... that’s good. It was good,  _ this _ was good. Meeting you that is... again? And um... thank you for the light.” he says feeling quite silly saying it all that way. Garak nods and wow, he really can’t keep his foot out of his mouth because that misty look is back again. Julian clears his throat and holds out his hand awkwardly to shake, switching his cigarette to his left hand before deciding just to let it drop with a quick crush of his worn red Converse. Garak looks down at Julian’s outstretched hand and instead gently guides his arm up by the wrist. Julian lets him position his fingers and remains still when Garak presses their palms together, warmth between their fingertips. 

 

Their hands are both older, rougher, Garak’s not quite as straight as they once were. He doesn’t know how he knows that but he’s certain of it. Julian can hear the church bells starting to chime for six after they’ve stood there like that a moment. He really needs to go. They both lower their hands at the same time. There are so many things that Julian wants to say, wants to ask, but he doesn’t know where to begin. He thought he remembered being much more brave, more bold, less broken but... but Dr. Parmak tells him that he needs to focus on building on the foundation that’s there. He should tell Dr. Parmak about Garak as well. 

“Thank you,” Julian says again as he zips his jacket back up and gets his stiff legs moving again. He’s about to protest when Garak wordlessly helps him off the high curb. But he can see that Garak struggles as well and merely accepts the help with silent consideration.  Julian shouldn’t have left his cane but he can make it. He always does.

 

“Take care,” Garak says and Julian thinks he hears something following that sounds like “my dear” but he’s sure he’s imagining such a thing from the strange old lizard man. Somehow that thought leaves him feeling sad as he nods once more and starts carefully walking back the dark city street to his room on the second floor. The darkness tends to make him uneasy but somehow tonight he feels safe. Julian wonders if he really will see Garak again. He can only dare to dream…

 

\---

 

The room shimmers back around him, and Garak nearly collapses when it does. And when he does Kelas is there to catch him as best as he can. A few feet away, Julian lays silently on the bed, not stirring. Jack, the “leader” of the strange mutants that used to look up to Julian had said that the modified holoprojector would be able to manifest the world inside Julian’s head the same as any holoprogram. He had said it was the least that they owed Julian for everything that he’d done for them. That was the message that Kelas had passed along and Garak thought it strange that the man had come alone. He hadn’t known him to be comfortable without the rest of his “pack”.

 

Garak had sent a polite thank you even as he’d initially decided the endeavor was pointless. He was sure as he’d said to Kelas that there wasn’t anything left there. Kelas was never one to accept such things so easily, and had relayed that while Garak may have had his suspicions on Jack’s motivations, that was no reason for them to abandon Julian. The excuse was a kindness that he didn’t deserve, and he said as much, saying softly that he didn’t dare to dream though not, he assured Kelas in  _ that _ way. 

 

Whatever barriers may lay between the two old lovers, that was nothing but a small stream surely compared to the ocean between him and Julian and even if it wasn’t… Kelas would always be his first home no matter how many vines might grow around the foundation. So Kelas had opted to use the device in Julian’s room instead, again firm on the matter that Julian’s health needn’t suffer because of Garak’s uncertainty, and wasn’t this why he would never have made it as a doctor. A smiles, a pat of his hand, and a silent forgiveness that he didn’t deserve. But every week for months, Kelas would come to him and tell him that Julian was there, that Garak needed to see him. 

 

Kelas was right.

Julian needed him.

“Elim?”  _ I would have left him there if it wasn’t for you.  _ Garak feels Kelas’ arms tighten around him and he’s so grateful that whatever Ancients may reign that this is one of those times where such a thing is possible. He doesn’t understand how Kelas has remained so strong. “Breathe for me Elim. You need to come back too.” Garak realizes that he had in fact collapsed The both of them are twined around each other like two miserable orphans clinging in the cold. He can’t imagine that Kelas is comfortable under his weight but he makes no complaint. Kelas always seems fragile to those who don’t know him but Kelas is an unbreakable iron tower who suffers every lean Garak has to make on him, who’s suffered as much for Garak as Cardassia, and still stands stooped, bent, seeming so fragile, but unbreakable as he’s always been. 

 

Garak can see that his spectacles are hopelessly fogged. Kelas tells him to breathe again and he finds his breaths are shaky.

“I’m sorry, K-kelas I can’t q-quite seem to...” 

“It’s alright, Elim,” Kelas whispers to him. “He’s alright.” And that’s when Garak figures out, wise and brilliant Castellan that the reason he cannot breathe, the reason that he cannot see is because there’s water in his eyes and water in his lungs and he thinks that he very well might die drowning in that anguish.

“Kelas,” comes out as a pitiful whimper, comes out as raw pain as he says the name again, unable to do anything but bury his face into the comforting warmth of Kelas’ shoulder. Kelas is always warm when everything else is cold.

 

Just like Julian was.

Just like Julian  _ is. _

And there are so many reasons to be afraid, to turn back, to leave things this flawed but perfect mess, leave it to Kelas but…

 

Garak is going to see him again.

 

_ “Won't you tell me all your sweet little lies _

_ So I can die here in your arms tonight? _

_ 'Cause all I've got to go off _

_ Are lessons from a love song” _

_ -Echosmith “Lessons” _

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garak meets Julian again and Julian has a few more flashes of memory.

_ Get into my car, get into my life _

_ Get into my heart, you know what I like _

_ Come give me something that I won't know how to live without _

_ I don't wanna miss and I can't let this could pass me now _

 

Julian meets the lizard man again along the river. Sometimes he likes to spend his days slowly making his way down watching the ice floes in the winter when everything is frozen. It makes him feel like he’s on a distant world in some far off future where humanity has taken its place amongst the stars. He had said to Dr. Parmak- that he’d started dreaming of outer space nearly every night after meeting Garak again. He was concerned that he might disappear too far into his own mind. Dr. Parmak had assured him that such fears were normal but encouraged him to keep going out every day as he had been even just to walk. Julian listened to him and followed his directions exactly. Dr. Parmak, Julian realized without ever noticing before was also a lizard man. He wanted very badly to ask Dr. Parmak if he knew Garak but that seemed awfully presumptuous, so he kept silent on the matter. 

 

Julian thought perhaps they’d given him a lizard doctor because of the Medicaid cuts. That was what Mary had said to him. His neighbor, Mary was an old woman of indeterminate age that he imagined to be somewhere between eighty and two hundred. She said it was only a matter of time before they replaced her own doctor, Dr. Obaray with a lizard doctor too at the rate the country was declining.  She spoke often of the war and her husband though Julian couldn’t rightly be sure which war she was referring to. She found it funny that Julian had a pill cocktail comparable to hers. She also tended to frequently drift off into dream worlds while the two of them shared company on her sofa at night watching the old television in her room. Mary also told him if he didn’t listen to the lizard doctor he’d never be well enough to no longer need the cane. So even on days when it snowed Julian was sure to go for a stroll. 

 

Julian doesn’t know why sometimes he can hear things and sense things that others can’t. Mary had said to him that it was the government experimenting on them they way they had done to her grandson some twenty of thirty years ago. She was convinced they’d done the same to him and he had to promise whenever he entered the house that she could “de magnetize” him. She spoke often of her family but had no pictures. Neither did Julian. It made Julian wonder if they really  _ hadn’t _ done something to him while he was asleep. Sometimes he wonders if he hadn’t dreamed being alive before now. So in that way meeting Garak was a blessing. It was something that he could look forward to. Dr. Parmak had asked him as he always did if he had any goals. Before now Julian couldn’t imagine any. Now he had one at least: seeing Garak again.

 

 _Well_ _Julian, s’pose now you’ll need to find something else._ He finds his head turning before Garak should rightly be close enough. He sees the gray and black shape before Garak really comes into focus. Dr. Parmak had suggested a pair of spectacles similar to his but Julian found they gave him a terrible headache. He thinks, or rather somehow he _knows_ that his perfect eyesight is a small price to pay for... for something he isn’t sure of. Julian shakes himself back to the present as Garak comes closer. He’s curious as to whether or not Garak drove. Cars intimidate Julian. He’s certain that he’s never driven one in his life. He usually relies on the buses or the light rail.

 

“Garak?” He asks from the bench where he’s seated. There’s an acknowledging motion from that figure, and before he comes into focus Julian quickly puts his cigarette out. He’s almost certain that the smoke must have bothered him the last time. Julian has his cane with hm today, the walk along the canal far more difficult than others he’s taken. Julian waves feeling himself pulled into some excitement that he thought he’d lost.  _ God the way my heart would jump whenever I’d see you enter the... the... _ Julian blinks away whatever’s trying to crawl towards the surface and doesn’t let the slipping memory upset him as it sometimes does. Perhaps being near Garak will trigger more of those slipstream moments. Perhaps he may even be able to catch some of them.

 

Garak manages a smile for him today too and it’s still that terribly painful looking thing. Julian can feel his own joyous expression falter but then he decides that well that just must be the lizard way of trying to mimic a human expression. He tries to remember if Dr. Parmak’s face looks that same way but it slips away too. Julian hasn’t been able to remember anything else about Garak no matter how hard he’s tried. He’s sat on the pull out bed that he sleeps on trying some meditation stuff he’d seen in a magazine at the store but he’s never been able to focus right for it. His head is unable to be silent without a painful swimming buzz. The nicotine helps that though. He doesn’t trust himself to start drinking though sometimes he will nick a bit of vodka from Mary if it’s a particularly rough night. They’re not supposed to have anything like that but she always keeps a small bottle beneath her sofa and has said he’s welcome to it if he shares his cigs here and there. 

 

“Ah, Julian, you’re looking well. Please, you don’t need to stand for me. I confess, I have more than my fill of that in my current duties.”

“Oh,” Julian sits back down, not sure what Garak means by that. “Are you ah... in the military?” Did the US military recruit lizard men? Was that some area 51 thing they talked about in the rags at the grocery? Mary may have been right after all then about the experiments. Garak laughs softly, taking a seat next to him on the bench. His coat looks warm and Julian can see the wool hat and scarf. Garak is wearing gloves today is well. Julian’s wearing an old green army coat he’d picked up at the donation at Thanksgiving. He doesn’t usually feel the cold though sometimes his legs will go pins and needles and one days like today hands hands never seem to be warm. Julian isn’t sure why that’s funny and Garak fortunately feels the need to explain it for him.

 

“No, my... no, Julian,” Garak says as if he were about to say something else before thinking better of it. “I’m a tailor, that’s all. Just a tailor. When we first met you had some amusing misconceptions about my occupation as well. You’ve made a few curious guesses since then as well so perhaps I’m just... remembering.” Garak turns to him and Julian can see those blue eyes searching his face. He tries to smile.

“Oh, I see that sounds... I sound a bit foolish there and I’m sorry that I can’t remember but um... I was hoping talking to you might... bring something back? Were you and I friends?” Julian asks just as he thinks even with the scarf pulled up over his mouth, even with the funny scales, the ridges marbling his forehead and that weird blue dip that the older lizard man, that Garak is still one of the most handsome men that he’s ever seen.  _ Still? Where did that come from? _

 

“Yes, Julian, we were friends. A long time ago, we were friends,” Garak says as if he’s humoring him rather than truly agreeing. Julian isn’t sure what’s causing him to react in such a way. He isn’t sure how lizard people comfort each other either.  _ Alright then, unless he says otherwise let’s say that we were friends. He’s a tailor? Does he live nearby? Why haven’t I ever seen him before now? Did we quarrel? Was he angry with me? Was he visiting this entire time without my knowing it? I don’t think so. i’m sure that it’s been...  _ Julian tries to remember how long he’s been awake but it’s difficult without his notes. He should have brought a notebook with him but he didn’t think that he was going to see Garak again. He had a moment of panic that he may never see him again, and even if he does, he doesn’t know if he can remember the book every time....

 

“Julian?” Garak’s voice cuts through him and Julian realizes embarrassed that he’s blanked out again. Garak’s hand is on his shoulder as it was the other day they’d met. That steadies him for a moment. He wipes his hands on the faded jeans that he’s wearing. A cigarette would help but... but he doesn’t need that right now. He can wait. He can make himself wait. He’s sure that Garak isn’t going to want to hang around all day with him. Julian doesn’t talk very much anymore. He thinks he may have said more but he’s more at ease now listening to other voices. 

“Sorry, lost myself there a moment but it’s okay. Promise. Happens all the time. Cracked my head open or something I think. I think I... er... car accident. Met a car and we had a bit of a disagreement,” he says staring hard at Garak’s coat. 

 

Julian feels a belated shiver at Garak’s hand on his shoulder but it isn’t a bad one. He isn’t sure why but he feels a bit cold now as well. It might be the sun starting to go down again but he couldn’t help but stare out at the low winter rays hitting the frozen water. He doesn’t know how long he sat there or when he ate last but it couldn’t have been that long because he doesn’t feel hungry. Julian’s fingers tap a soft melody on Garak’s gloved hand and his head tip over, resting on it a moment. He looks at Garak uncertainly. 

“Is this alright?” he asks quietly, ready to move back if it’s too familiar for just friends. Garak looks absolutely miserable again and Julian just hates himself because it’s him that keeps doing it somehow. “Right, you don’t have to ah... I get a bit weird sometimes... cracked head and all.”

 

He lets go and Julian scoots a bit further away as a precaution. 

“No, Julian I...” Garak’s hand drops down and Julian can see him struggling with something. 

“If there’s something offensive I’m doing, please tell me, Garak.”

“It’s just difficult seeing you like this, though I can certainly appreciate the true difficulty lies with you-” Again there’s something else he swallows down but Julian just sighs and looks out through the black iron rails and watches the birds waddling along the ice. 

“Of course. You’re right. I... I can’t imagine if it was me, I mean and I had a friend in this sort of sad shape. Think I’d be upset as well.” Julian shakes his head then looks at Garak with a speculative tilt of his head. 

 

“Do you... do you suppose that might be why Sarina left? Of course I’ve asked all around but no one seems to know or want to give me the answer. Likely think I can’t handle the truth but I mean I think... I think I can accept that. I mean I don’t... I don’t remember her or anyone so it’s ah... it’s hard to miss what you don’t remember.” Julian crosses his arms tightly, sitting back on the bench like he could sink back into it. “Do you think that makes me a terrible person, Garak? I... I should think if you truly loved someone that it would be impossible to forget them.” 

 

Julian’s voice catches at that last bit of the question and he wishes that it wouldn’t upset Garak to lean into him. These are the sorts of things he hasn’t been able to bring himself to ask Dr. Parmak or Mary, or anyone else he’s talked to since leaving the hospital. He can feel his sinuses burning, and that blur of his eyes that goes beyond his lack of focus. It stings a bit as well and he closes them thinking that surely Garak is going to think he’s a mess and it will be better to have nothing to do with him.

 

It’s because his eyes are closed that he doesn’t immediately realize that Garak’s pulling him closer until warm arms are around him and he can smell clove and bergamot and it’s really the best damn smell in the entire galaxy.  _ The galaxy? _

“You’re one of the best men that I’ve ever had the privilege to know,” Garak says into his neck and Julian thinks that his voice trembles. He can’t be sure but given Julian’s penchant for upsetting him, it wouldn’t surprise him. 

“I...” He doesn’t know what to say to that so here simply enjoys the embrace. He enjoys being warm, realizing now that he didn’t know what it was to be cold until he knew what it felt to be warm like this. He doesn’t know how he’d every forgotten Garak the first time but he says a silent prayer to all the angels and saints may God strike him dead should he ever again. “Garak?” he asks, throat scratchy, legs starting to get numb, arms tingling. “Would you tell me how we met?” He thinks it’s a good place to start, and sees that when Garak pulls back, that the sky has begun to darken. He frowns. He should be getting back instead. 

“Of course, Julian,” Garak agrees. Julian can’t make out his face as well now. 

 

“I’ll tell you all about it, and then I’ll take you home.”

 

\---

 

It’s dark when Garak returns to the land of the living as some with a more glib tongue might call it. The world shimmers out again, and he doesn’t have to wait long before Kelas walks slowly into the room.

“Elim?” he asks softly, face an obvious picture of concern. Kelas is about as effective hiding his emotions as Julian is.  _ Guls, Julian... _ Garak feels as if the smile on his face will freeze there, a testament to stoicism. Julian is still behind him on the bed, and Garak doesn’t think that he can bear to turn around.

 

“Kelas?” he starts, clearing his throat when he realizes that his voice doesn’t quite seem to be cooperating properly. Garak doesn’t waste words telling himself that it wasn’t necessary to stay up, that at his age it’s going to wear on his health to worry after Garak like this. Instead, he lets that smile slip, lowly removing the coat and what Kelas knew he would need today for his trip. He’ll likely need it again tomorrow once all the meetings are concluded. Garak is still shivering in the warmth of Julian’s room when Kelas takes everything wordlessly, neatly folded, and waits for him to continue. Garak’s breath is deep but shaky.

 

“Do you think I might sleep with you tonight?” Yesterday was a good day for Kelas. Today has been a good day as well. Though Kelas has had a lot of good days in the past followed by bad, days where this isn’t okay and where he can’t be there but even so… no matter how painful it is if Garak asks-

 

“Always, Elim.”

 

_ And I, and I, and I've got my head spinning, spinning _

_ And I, and I, and I feel like I've been running _

_ And I, and I, and I've got this feeling, feeling _

_ That you and I, that you and I will just keep driving _

_ -Echosmith “Get into my Car” _


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garak and Julian grow closer and an unexpected visitor makes an appearance

_ These are the eyes and the lies of the taken _

_ These are their hearts but their hearts don't beat like ours _

_ They burn 'cause they are all afraid _

_ For every one of us, there's an army of them _

_ But you'll never fight alone _

_ 'Cause I wanted you to know _

 

“Do you ever dream of outer space, Garak?” Julian is seated on a plastic milk crate out back behind the old Goodwill. There was a cigarette in his hand but he put it out when he saw Garak approaching him. He had to apologize, tell him that he didn’t have long to chat. He was surprised that Garak had found him here as well but it was a pleasant surprise. Garak had let him know one of the ladies inside had said he could find his friend here. Julian let him know that he only had fifteen minutes before he had to get back. He was proud to tell him that he was making progress, that he thought he might be able to move himself to an apartment with a proper kitchen, a place where he might be able to have Garak over. Doctor Parmak had praised him for his progress. In the end, Julian wasn’t surprised that Garak had found him. Somehow he knew that the two of them would meet again. 

 

Julian remembered his notebook today so that he could be sure to capture anything that Garak said and not forget. He has it open looking at Garak excited. It doesn’t feel so cold today to him; he’s wearing a blue sweater and pair of faded jeans. He doesn’t like it but he’s also wearing his glasses so that he can read the numbers on the register properly. Garak is wearing the same wool coat and took a seat next to Julian without care for any dirt or possible snags. 

“I hope you don’t laugh at me. I feel like someone’s father in these things,” he said pushing them back on his face when Garak had seen them. Garak looked at him long and hard before saying that no, he thought they suited Julian just fine. It wasn’t quite what he was expecting; Julian somehow thought that Garak had spent a lifetime teasing him before now. But there was something nice about this too. 

 

“What did you want to talk about today, Julian?” Garak had asked him. “We used to have a lot of invigorating discussions over lunch.” Julian had instinctively leaned into him and maneuvered his head to Garak’s shoulder.

‘’fraid I just got a fifteen since this is part time but... but I’ll try to be invigorating.” He laughs softly. “Think all the vigor might have gone out of me when my head got cracked open.”

“Never,” Garak declares definitively and Julian smiles at that.

“It’s strange,” he says opening his notebook seeing the letter “DS” and the number “9” written to the most recent page. Julian doesn’t see well enough for long periods to draw but he’d managed to sketch out a small little doodle of a wheel in space with four prongs around it. “You see this here?

 

“Sometimes I dream of a space station far away from here. I think it started when I met you, you know.” Garak places his thumb over one of the sketches station prongs and Julian gasps. “Yes, yes that’s it! But how did you-” He turns and looks at Garak confused. “Can you… can you see inside my dreams or… or is this like from a… television program maybe?” Garak moves his thumb from the page and instead takes Julian’s hand.

“It would be to your detriment were I to tell you everything. I’m certain that my perceptions and memories might color your own in remembering. Do you… remember anything else from your… dream, Julian?” Garak asks him and Julian closes his eyes trying to remember. It’s difficult because there are so many images when he lets his mind drift. Sometimes when he shuts his eyes too long he starts to see fire and explosions and hear screams and people dying around him.

 

But not today. Today with Garak he doesn’t see any of those images that make his head spin and make him nauseous. 

“Alright. You’re right I can… um… right, I can picture them now. It’s... it’s strange... because I always see the same people. There’s a woman with these lines on her nose, a woman with spots along her face, a man with curly brown hair, a man with a funny looking head, a man with a mountain range on his forehead, a man with a washed over face like he’s got a stocking over his head or something and then… Then there’s a man there. He’s tall, he’s bald, he wears a red uniform and I... I feel like I want to call him father. Or maybe it’s that... I feel like... like I wonder what my life would have been like if... if a man like him was my father and not... ah well you don’t need to know about my father. I’ve never done anything but disappoint my father.” Julian laughs softly. “Can you believe that… that of everything I’ve forgotten I still remember… being a child… being… being institutionalized because there was something wrong with my head?”

 

Garak is silent a moment before he squeezes Julian’s hand.

“I know,” he answers softly.

“He hasn’t come to see me either… no one… no one else came once Sarina left but... but I suppose I can’t blame him. I must have been an awful burden when I was younger but I know that I used to be a doctor... Oh well, of course you know that. Stupid, Julian,” he whispers to himself closing his eyes tighter. “Sorry, you know I have good days and bad days and I... do you think that I... that I could ever be what I was?” Julian asks him opening his eyes again, staring hard at the cracks in the blacktop. “I’m afraid.” He’s said it to Doctor Parmak, but there’s finality in making such a confession to Garak. Doctor Parmak didn’t know him before he was... broken. Garak did. “I’m afraid that I’ll never be what I once was... that it will never come back.”

“It will come back, Julian.”

 

“Right, of course, that’s what they keep telling me but… I keep feeling like I’ve lost something terribly important. Like there’s something not right and I…” Julian turns, looking Garak in the eyes and he remembers again how beautiful and blue they are- like they could drown him, like Garak’s mouth is the most beautiful thing when it’s curled to some lie and… he doesn’t understand these thoughts. “I...” He feels that he’s always loved Garak’s mouth and then he realizes that he’s leaning in with a tilt of his head and… and something so intimate as a kiss should spark some memory... but it doesn’t... but he feels as this is what should be happening and he doesn’t understand why his mouth is so dry and his hands are starting to shake and Garak isn’t moving and Julian feels so confused because he wants this more than anything and-

“I never meant to hurt you,” he says with a stop, minutes to midnight short his mouth in that uncrossable gap to Garak’s. Julian doesn’t understand why he says that. He’s sure there’s a reason but-

 

But his watch is beeping and he’s sure he’s making an awful break but he has to get back because… because…

 

\---

 

Garak is breathing hard, the memories swirling in his head as the time is up and the room snaps back to its reality. He thinks how Guls damn lucky that Julian is to be sitting in that odd fantasy world dreaming of that thing called television and worrying of nothing else but his imagined service job. Garak can’t do this anymore. He can’t. He can’t look at Julian and see those hazel eyes flicker with him grasping, searching, like Garak is meant to give him something that he no longer has to give. He can’t go through Julian’s push and pull and beautiful neck, pained expression like everything Garak says wounds him. Those words haunt him, along with Julian’s expression of betrayal when he looked at Garak.  _ “no one else came once Sarina left…” _ And Julian didn’t even have the spirit left to ask him.  _ Why didn’t I come to see you? Why did I abandon you here? _ That’s what the real Julian would have said to him. The real Julian would have joked, would have made some smart remark and he wouldn’t have stared at him like a glassy eyed doll and apologize for some imagined transgression.

 

That man wasn’t his Julian if there ever was a “his Julian”.

 

Garak stands up straight from where he’s been bent over, breathing hard with a soft curse. He blinks at the knock at the door. Surely Parmak wouldn’t knock? But he sees Parmak’s head duck in as the door opens.

“My apologies, Elim for the ahh breaking of our convention but there was a visitor here who I felt we would benefit from speaking with and I shouldn’t think to push you into something you’re not ready for. That is if you’re not up to it since these visits seem to drain you so…” There’s a bit of a rustle as Parmak’s head turns to the side and Garak rubs at his face.

“It’s fine, Kelas.” Garak removes the coat, the garment stifling in the warm room. He drapes it over the back of the bed from where Julian is laying still dreaming. “Does this have anything to do with the upcoming-” 

 

Garak stops when he sees exactly who it is that enters the room after Parmak and he freezes. Garak doesn’t forget faces. He doesn’t forget names. He especially doesn’t forget figures who make his threat senses rise to dangerous levels. That’s the only reason that he really remembers the man beyond Julian’s offhanded mention and stories. Jack had visited him once rambling off in some manic way about Julian ruling the world but Garak had paid him little mind not wanting to feed the beast to return. 

 

He was the most dangerous of the lot of the augments that were brought by that doctor. He was the one with the furtive, darting eyes. He was the one with the enhanced strength and speed and eyes that said he might any moment decide in his madness that there was an immediate threat that needed to be taken out. He was clever and bright, and a man that Julian never seemed to have the sense to be afraid of. And he in turn always seemed far too fascinated with Julian.

 

The name was simple to remember; it was Jack. Just Jack- like plain simple “Garak”; and like Garak there was nothing plain or simple about him. When Garak watches him step confidently into the room, he reassesses that threat level and determines it’s just as high as before if not higher. He’s thankful for the disruptor pistol by the bed in the top drawer of the dresser. Of course Garak is aware that the device- that the technology allowing them to project the space of Julian’s mind to the room- was from Jack but that doesn’t mean Garak had ever expected to see him in person. He rather thought that the gift was in lieu of his ever coming to Cardassia Prime. Jack has no reason to visit Julian that he knows of. They were never that close that he recalls. Not the way that Julian was with-

 

“Messy messy, Jubilee,” Jack says, walking right past him to where Julian’s lying on the bed. “How many times did I… did I tell you to run for it, turn around, don’t come back hm? RPM could’ve left ‘em all behind but not you, you had to save everyone in that asylum, didn’t you? And then zap went your brain, McMurphy...” Garak watches him, hearing the words, knowing from what little recollection he has that Jack was one of the “defective” ones. He was one of the augments that didn’t make it. The affection is strange. Julian had written Garak once regarding them, nearly as an afterthought. It had simply said that “the others” had made progress, that they were able to integrate and that was the end of it. Jack is looking at Julian muttering things that sound like nonsense about Jack being the one who should’ve broken his crown not Jill but-

 

Garak is distracted as he watches Jack occasionally... vibrate, his hand up the side of Julian’s face as he insults him a million times in two different languages. Garak remembers that Jack is the same age as Julian but he looks years younger. His hair is the same messy auburn as before though vanity might play some part there. Garak doesn’t see any gray in his mustache, in that patch below his mouth but again there’s much to be argued for vanity versus genetics. His eyes were a similar hazel to Julian’s but wild, uncertain, and though there’s a black patch over his left eye, his right appears more settled. His mouth is turned down in a frown, he’s still dressed in a long coat and a buttoned up vest as if the higher temperature doesn’t bother him, smartly dressed, really as he stands there. He doesn’t have any weapons but then again a man engineered to be a weapon wouldn’t need them. 

 

Kelas is still hanging back next to Garak and it seems they both sense some intimacy that they hadn’t realized before. Jack is still looking at Julian shaking his head before it snaps up to Garak without warning. That erratic turn isn’t quite what it once was. It’s tempered and Garak notices black leather gloves on his hands as he stops himself from raising a finger to his mouth.

“He’s still out. He’s still dead and damned to the world, still sleeping like Endymion so why did I bother giving you the device if you weren’t gonna pull him out? You were supposed to pull him out you were supposed to bring him back to me! Do you like keeping him here!? Are you trying to steal him for yourself?! Well too late that ship sailed so why isn’t he-” Jack catches himself, taking a deep breath, head back, voice dropping back from that yell to his normal cadence. “I thought you would have brought him back by now,” he repeats though it’s clear that the steady voice is a strain. 

 

Garak takes a wary step forward careful to maintain the range just out of reach that he gauged. Jack is faster than Julian was, possibly better reflexes, surely faster than Garak at his age but he doesn’t sense a threat just... the agitation that one would have for a-

“Why do you mean you thought I would have brought him back by now? He’s in a coma, as you can quite clearly see and I assure you that reality does not mold itself to whatever human fairytales you’ve woven into this.” Or whatever other illusions he’s clearly dreamed of Julian and the rest of them. That’s what it is, surely it’s an illusion that he’s manifested. He isn’t well, just as mad as ever, Garak decides.

“Ha! Right! Exactly!” Jack exclaims, raising a finger dramatically. He takes a step but there’s another breath and again he holds back, snapping his hands behind his back. “Right, exactly the fairy tale and in this Talia needs the king, no wait, not the king, the king knocked her up and it was the suckling babe that woke her no no, you’ve got it wrong mmhm we need a different-”

 

“Jack,” Kelas interrupts gently with a stupidly fearless step forward. Parmak is the one who puts a hand to Jack’s shoulder with that look that could calm the fiercest and wild hound. “Take a breath Jack, I fear you’ve confused Elim and myself as well and ah… you know that us basics, you say? We need a few more steps to catch you. Is that alright, Jack? Can you give us a few more steps so that we might catch you?” Jack blinks at him from that eye, carefully unfurling his arms, stretching them in front, nodding definitively drawing a breath. Garak swears that if Kelas had the stomach for it he’d have made a fine interrogator and as if reading that thought, Kelas stares at him with a disapproving frown and a sigh.

“I shall endeavor to be silent and allow the man to say his piece,” Garak says, deciding to leave the pistol. For now.

 

“Right, of course, you’re limited so, layman’s terms, dial it back mmhm,” Jack says softly, his breaths erratic but slowing. “So, we have a theory- the rest of us do- that the closest one, can bring him back. He’s back there buried, hiding half broken, not his fault though the Lethean attack weakened him. Pity, poor thing he might’ve just been missing an eye here.” Jack laughs awkwardly.

“I’m sorry,” Garak says already breaking that vow to silence, ignoring Parmak’s look to keep it. “It was my understanding that Julian’s mental state is the result of watching that woman taking her own life.” Parmak is glaring at him mouthing that Sarina Douglas wasn’t “that woman” but “Julian’s wife”. Well she’s dead now so it hardly matters what she was in life because in death she’s nothing but a woman who wouldn’t even visit Julian’s head in whatever dreamworld he’s fallen into. And Garak needs information and that is the mission at hand now that he finally has something to work with. He sees Jack twitch again, another of those laughs before he crosses his arms, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

 

“Heh,  _ au contraire mon frere _ , as the saying goes. You think, you really think this… that this man, this agent, this extra sensitive bean who seen death, war, torture, friends snuffed out like candles -all that good ultraviolent stuff- couldn’t handle that hm?” 

“I wouldn’t think so either from what I’ve seen, but then again I’ve had plenty of opportunity to witness the breaking point of many an “unbreakable” man.”

“Ah, unbreakable, but not Bashir, not Julian, not  _ my _ Annabel Lee here…”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that your contingent was less connected by similar genetic enhancements and more by carnal knowledge,” Garak snaps starting to wonder if everyone in the galaxy has had Julian but him. Jack doesn’t rise to that antagonism, instead turning back to Julian looking down.

 

“T’was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea… Ah right, limited lizards, limited lizards, hm, slow it down Jack. But you know it really  _ was _ the wind that came out of the cloud by night. When Sarina had taken down the system it activated…” He trails off a moment before whispering almost too soft for Garak to hear but he heard it nonetheless. “…chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”

“The system running Section 31? I thought that woman, was the only one affected.”

“She was,” Jack agrees with an emphatic nod of his head. “But you don’t… you don’t understand how we were… how... how we  _ are _ connected hm.”

“I’d rather not,” Garak says flatly. Jack ignores him. 

“It’s the killswitch, mmhm, that’s what They told us. One of us turns against the Mainframe it takes us all out at once.” And then it all makes sense when Jack taps to his eye and Garak looks at Julian. The Lethean attack was a psychic attack that would have damaged Julian’s ability to resist future assaults. Julian had told him then that no one had ever survived an attack and Garak sees now it must have been like a snake bite. Once bitten, forever weakened. Which means that-

 

“Ah, not so limited after all! I see the dots connecting, Castellan. You got it, there’s hope for you yet, mmhm. Exactly! Ashes ashes... we all fall down.” 

 

_ These are the nights and the lights that we fade in _

_ These are the words but the words aren't coming out _

_ They burn 'cause they are hard to say _

_ For every failing sun, there's a morning after _

_ Though I'm empty when you go _

_ I just wanted you to know... _

 

_ The world is ugly _

_ But you’re beautiful to me… _

_ -My Chemical Romance “The World is Ugly” _

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of Jack's secrets revealed as Garak sees something he wishes he hadn't

_ If I could be with you tonight _

_ I would sing you to sleep _

_ Never let them take the light behind your eyes _

 

The killswitch… Garak sits outside in the garden watching the night blooms of the evening primrose. The seeds were a gift from Julian years ago. Julian had said that he was aware of the potential problems in introducing foreign species to a new world, but he didn’t think that would be a problem. The flowers were hardy. They grew through the cracks in the sidewalk of old Earth, along railways and in deserts were there was no water. They were perennial and bloomed anew year after year, hardy plants always returning with their fragrant night flowers. But they weren’t invasive, yielding to other species when in competition for resources, allowing others to flourish instead. Garak thought in a way they were a lot like the man who’d gifted them to him.

 

They flourished here though, and he watched the pale orange catching the moonlight. Jack had told them about far more than just the killswitch, though that was the issue which lay at the heart of what needed to be resolved. He was also able to explain the strange dreamworld that Julian’s mind was trapped in. It was an old place on Earth which no longer existed after the Third World War. It was genetic memory, Jack had said, but not Julian’s. It was Jack’s and Garak wasn’t sure that he particularly cared to hear any more on the how and the why of that. It was quite clear from the way that Jack spoke to him, from the way he stomped up and down the room demanding that they hurry up and “fix” his Julian. As far as Garak was concerned he should have been the one retrieving the damn body then.

 

Why should Garak be the one to spend two years staring into the ashen face of a corpse? Clearly Julian has no shortage of paramours spanning the Alpha Quadrant who could come for the body as it were. It gives Garak some flash of memory of a state funeral he had attended once for a prominent legate. After the family was called to send off the beloved old bastard no less than three separate groups stepped forward unbeknownst to the other. Not only had it been a fiasco which Garak admittedly relished, it was an awful stain on the reputation of the Records Bureau. Had Garak known that he would be the one called in to waste his valuable skills on scaring a bunch of bureaucrats he wouldn’t have been nearly as amused as he was.

 

_ You already know the reason that it had to be you, Elim _ , his mind traitorously supplies.  _ From Jack’s account, the three of them had nearly died themselves _ . In Jack’s case, it was only the shock of pulling his own eye out that severed the break that was going on in his mind. He was sure that Jack had been telling the truth on  _ that  _ part but was less certain when he said somewhat evasively that it was only a similar shock to the others that pulled them through. He refused to elaborate when Garak asked about the particulars. By their absence, Garak imagines the price to have likely been much higher but he has no personal stake to pursue the matter further. The entire process was already taking its toll on him prior to Jack’s arrival and the revelation that Garak’s place here is merely as some hired necromancer to revive a Guls damned corpse so a crazy augment gets his lover back…

 

Not for the first time this evening, Garak is seriously contemplating pulling back. He has responsibilities here. He should already be in bed for the meetings he knows he’ll have to deal with tomorrow. The Castellan of the Cardassian Union hardly has the ability to stay up all night for one comatose human… especially a human who made it quite clear that their lives were off in two parallel directions never to intersect. But then Garak keeps coming back to the whys of Jack giving him the device. Once he was well there was no reason Jack couldn’t have come for Julian then. No, Jack was quite emphatic that Garak was the one meant to revive him, but the more he spoke, the more obvious it was that one still grasped sanity by a precious thread. Still, by all accounts, between the three augments there’s no reason that they couldn’t work out the science themselves.

 

And that’s when Garak shuts his eyes and has a waking dream of Julian’s mouth nearly meeting his in that terribly human action before stopping, before those eyes had looked at him with that pitiful apology. Nothing makes sense. None of it and he was painfully honest with Kelas. He can’t do this anymore. Whatever stupid game this is, he can’t be a part of it. Garak frowns. As the wind blows the delicate primrose shakes with it.  _ He isn’t yours, Elim. He never was. Whatever you dreamed between the two of you on the station however many decades ago it was now, that’s all that it was. You might as well chalk it up to the delusions of a mind at rest, of a lonely consciousness desperate for something to cling to in your solitude. These flowers are the only tangible blossoms to bloom from your foolish fantasies. _

 

Garak reaches out to pluck one then pauses. He was going to place it beside Julian’s bedside but it’s a sentiment that he still finds beneath him.  _ You’re pathetic, Elim. Courting the unconscious body of another’s lover, and in such an overwrought human way at that; you’ve grown too soft. _ He walks towards the back door then stop himself, sensing someone coming. It’s an irrational action, he tells himself. This is his house after all, and he’s hardly the ex spy skulking around a repurposed space station. Nonetheless, Garak slips back into the shadows behind the stone wall next to the house. Julian had said to him once that Garak was the only one truly capable of approaching him undetected. Garak thought little of such an observation at the time. He was trained to be silent, to leave no footprint. It wasn’t until the truth of Julian’s augmented status came to light that Garak realized just what an accomplishment it was at that.

 

It would seem that Jack cannot sense him either as he walks out looking down at something in the palm of his hand. Garak’s left eye catches a flash of silver as Jack walks to that wooden bench. He stops, listening likely even for a breath. But Garak leaves none in the night air loud with the sound of rushing wind and insects making their  _ chirruping _ mating calls. He remains ensconced in the darkness though he doesn’t doubt that were Jack to know to search for him, that single augmented eye would still easily seek him out from the shadows. But Jack doesn’t know to look for him and Jack seems to be unusually occupied as he does something with the device that nearly causes Garak to give himself away when he starts in surprise.

 

It’s Julian standing there. Not the Julian from the dream world, lost and confused, but a Julian that appears more the old Starfleet officer that Garak once knew.

 

Julian has that same exasperated expression that he used to wear when Garak would say something especially provocative. That’s not what catches Garak’s attention the most prominently, however. No, what stands out the most is the matter of Julian’s age. He appears much as he had when they parted ways on Deep Space Nine. Garak isn’t quite sure it is then what he’s actually witnessing. Some sort of toy? A recording? Fortunately for him, that little slip goes unnoticed because Jack’s attention is solely fixated on the figure in front of him like he’s looking at one of the electromagnet specters that humans call “ghosts”. He appears solid, however, much like the Julian from the mobile projections into the room. But if he’s a mobile projection then why doesn’t he appear as his actual age?  _ Ah, vanity, doctor, do you still see yourself as that young man?.. _

 

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Jack,” Garak hears Julian say, bound in a fast embrace as that sentence is muffled into Jack’s shoulder. Garak watching the arms come up, come back, a few moments of breathing and he’s cursing himself for his inability to let things lie. Whatever this is, he doesn’t particularly want to witness it.

“I can and I will and that just goes to show you who the better augment is since you gave up, rolled over, played dead and I… I’m not gonna let you do that hm.”

“Jack-”

“The lizard, the lizard man, that’s the prince, right? That’s the key, that’s what you want right? That’s the bait, that’s the little bell to bring the cat out from under the couch, isn’t it hm?” There’s a strange pause to that moment, as Jack once more returns to the matter of Garak’s alleged unique ability to pull Julian from whatever mental trauma he’s suffered.

 

“Please tell me that you didn’t leave Mrs. Norris by herself,” Julian says looking at him concerned, taking a steps back. Jack pauses but then huffs indignantly.

“No! L-Lauren has it. The hellbeast... likes her better but you knew that when you got her. You knew she didn’t like me, knew she liked to scratch at my pants, disappeared to two eyes looking looking what if I…” Jack had taken a few steps moving in a circle like some strange old timepiece Julian had shown him a picture of once. He called it a cuckoo clock explaining that they were a popular conversation piece (curious term, Garak had always thought) and that the mechanisms would prompt the little figures on the hour to pop out of a little door and spin around with a chime or some other indicator sound. He never quite understood the visual until now that Jack walks almost manically like a little bit of a timepiece from an old wooden machine.

 

“That’s it! Should’ve thought of it earlier... The cat’s the key… no, the play’s the thing and you’re  _ playing _ with me, Mercutio!”

“Jack,” Julian says softly, Jack stopping upright at the soft call of his name. Julian takes his hand, the intimate gesture rather turning Garak’s stomach. It has far more meaning to him when Julian’s thumbs circle around the Jack’s hands. “I’m proud of you for coming here yourself. You know I miss you-”

“But you can’t you can’t, you can and you will and you’re  _ mine  _ and I…” Jack takes a deep breath, the soft tap of his vibrating foot to the stone. “I can’t do it without you. I mean… I mean  _ we _ can’t do it without you and you’ve rested long enough.”

“Jack…” forehead to forehead and the wind carries the sound well enough that Garak can close his eyes. “I can’t come back to you. I don’t… I don’t even know why I’m alive right now but if this is the price for the rest of you I… I don’t mind sleeping awhile.”

 

“I reached out to you, Alice. I told you to take my hand and not fall down the damn rabbit hole.”

“Ah, but here I am,” said with that touch of self-effacing Julian humor. “ _ Sous une lumière blafarde. Court, danse et se tord sans raison La Vie… _ ” Garak hears a laugh, not understanding those words. Jack does. Garak can hear it when he answers.

“You don’t belong in the darkness, Julian,” he says oddly steady.

“I’m where I belong, Jack.”

“Right,” a snort. “How  _ doth _ the little crocodile improve his shining tail, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale?”

“This isn’t about him,” Julian growls. “You know that. I told you that.”

“It’s always  _ always _ about him. Let us come to a common term, let us worship no one except our God.”

“You don’t need to blaspheme to make your point.”

“Aha! The translation  _ is _ blasphemy! You said it, there, I said it was and you said it wasn’t and now you turn it on your head mmhmm Devil’s advocate, Fie thou dishonest satan!” 

 

Guls, how has Julian spent so many years with that? And Garak is sure it has to be at least that long. It was likely since the first time they met as much as Julian had gone on about how much the man exasperated him. But it wasn’t just Jack, Garak recalls, it was all of them. Section 31 had done some experimental procedure Jack had said which bound the five of them together as a failsafe. It’s how Julian has that genetic memory of Jack’s ancestors. It’s how they were able to attack all of them at once. It was a dead man’s switch as they said in human culture; an apt term that Garak has grown rather fond of. The main System is dead and they should be too but they escaped. Some perhaps more than others and Garak has heard plenty to decide that he’s done playing these games with the humans and he’s going to-

 

“I love you Jack,” said simply and Garak breathes in deeply thoroughly irritated at such garish human sentiment.

“You loved him first and you love him more and when he brings you back I’m going to kill him.” 

“No you won’t, Jack.”

“You’re coming back with me, you coming back with me!” the stomp of a foot, some other scuffling noise. “I didn’t… I didn’t come here… all the way out here… I… you know that I wouldn’t… not alone… I wouldn’t come here alone and come back alone, from childhood’s hour I have not  _ been  _ as others were!”

“I know… I know, love but I… I’m tired Jack. I can’t do this anymore. You and the others you don’t need me. You don’t… not like that I promise you. It’s the last of the connection still trying to force us all back together but I would never leave if I didn’t think you could handle it. Don’t you see? They’ve had us locked in that… that boxed Eden so long but I…”

“The cloud that took the form…”

“There’s no demon, Jack. I promise.”

“I wasn’t talking about me, hm... I was… I was… you say his name in your sleep.”

“Jack…”

“He’s the only damn god that you pray to!”

“You don’t need to keep on about him. You’re getting fixated again and you’re fixating on nonsense because he and I can  _ never _ be together as I’ve told you.” More stomping, more scuffling, and Garak looks to see Jack’s frantic agitated pacing before he comes to stop yelling into the sky like a man possessed. The entire conversation has deserted him and right now he doesn’t have any answers.

“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome lizard?!” Jack bellows. Julian walks up to him stopping, strangely seeming to shift to the older Julian, but not tired, not defeated, strong, standing tall.

“I won’t let you hurt him.”

“Are you going to come back from the land of the dead to stop me? Hm? Then stifle yourself!”

“Maybe I will,” Julian says with that quiet resolution that makes Garak smile in spite of himself.

“You come back and I kill him.”

“And if I don’t you kill him twice as hard,” Julian finishes with a soft laugh as if they’ve had this conversation more than once.  _ Such morbid gallows humor, you’ve refined _ .  _ I knew you had potential, my dear. _ “Get some sleep, Jack. Things will be better in the morning and you’ll know the right thing to do.” Ah, well that’s reassuring, Garak thinks as that seems to mean something to the two actors in the garden sharing more human nuzzling, grooming each other like two primates in the wild. Garak closes his eyes, still, silent, counting up the way he used to do in the closet when it was dark to steady himself and the walls started closing in. The darkness itself poses no threat but he’s also made use of that technique for entering that deep state where his presence blinks out. 

 

Garak is only dimly aware of the footsteps as Jack strides past murmuring softly “off with his head,” an anxious fingers in his mouth and there’s something  _ off _ about this still... He’s only dimly aware of a lot of things really, the entire conversation neatly tilting everything upside down in his Julian world view. But first things first, he needs to get that mobile emitter away from Jack. 

 

It’s time that Garak talks to the  _ real _ Julian.

 

_ One day I'll lose this fight _

_ As we fade in the dark _

_ Just remember you will always burn as bright _

_ -My Chemical Romance “The Light Inside your Eyes” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Julian and Jack quote from Baudelaire “The End of the Day” from “Fleurs du Mal”, Lewis Carroll “The Crocodile”, Shakespeare “Twelfth Night”, and Poe “Alone”. I mean there are a million other quotes in this story too but a lot in this one that may be a bit more obscure.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parmak and Julian have a meeting in the dreamworld before he returns to Garak. Garak is never ready for moments like these.

_(We stand, we stand, we can’t stand to fall down)_

_Here comes another_

_(We stand, we stand, we can’t stand to fall down)_

_Don’t pull me under_

 

Reality breaks. That’s the only way that Julian knows how to describe it. He thinks of becoming unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim, and wonders if that’s what it feels like. He doesn’t remember if Billy had cracked his head open either. Julian doesn’t know if that’s a normal side effect but for a moment the walls of his new apartment - well new to him rather, not so much new themselves - crack open and he can see out to the endless night sky as if he were up there in the thick of it and not down on Earth. It doesn’t last and he almost thinks that it was just an odd mote in his eye or an aberration that he only thought he saw. But then it happens again as he’s riding the elevator back down to the first floor. The walls turn gray like metal surrounding him, the lights dim and he hears the word _turbolift_ echo perfectly supplied in his mind before the doors open and he’s once more in the lobby with the mildewy carpet and the candy dish that never seems to lose or gain candy.

 

He tells Doctor Parmak about these episodes and is relieved to hear that it’s normal. Doctor Parmak is still a lizard seated across from him with a notepad and a pair of large silver framed spectacles that seem to forever slip on his nose. He sits with a hunch and has long white hair that he wears loosely braided. He dresses strangely too, always wearing some earthy colored tunic, loose pants, and sandals looking rather like some ancient hippy lizard guru from the seventies. Julian still doesn’t ever remember there being lizard men like this but every week Doctor Parmak sits across from him gently asking questions and solicitously taking notes. Julian asked him once if he’d fought in the war or if he’d gone to Canada back then. There was a confused look to this the first time he asked, but the following week Doctor Parmak assured him that he’d gone to Canada and had never seen combat.

 

Garak had stopped coming to see him.

 

Or rather he hadn’t seen Garak in a week or two and he was growing concerned. _Stupid Julian, what do you think you were doing? You probably offended him. It wasn’t enough to apologize, you should’ve promised him that you’d never do that again. He’s gone all this time why would he ever want... anything like that from you?_ Doctor Parmak had assured him that “Elim” - Julian didn’t understand the word but somehow he knew it related to Garak -  would surely come back and likely had important emergency business to attend to or some fires to put out. Julian wondered if it might not be a sale or an illness but Julian was sure that he’d never see him again. He was sure that he’d be gone to the darkness and... and that was another thought that he didn’t understand. He wasn’t lost. He thought he was finding his way. He’d met a lot of lovely people at his work and he’d had some more pocket money to take the bus to a few more places, look around old monuments and... and dream.  

 

His dreams came so much more vividly now. It scared him. He was certain that the reason Garak had gone was his unwanted advance. But in spite of his resolutions to swallow it back and forget about it the more he tries the more he dreams about him. it isn’t clear. It’s as if he’s never known his body intimately but spent a lifetime dreaming alive the feel of his rippling scales beneath his fingers. It’s like he’s spent night after night his enhanced (Enhanced? What does that mean?) senses making some fantastic imaginary map marrying a real scent to an illusory one, a touch of hands, a brush of lips. Sometimes Julian sees a yellow landscape, a desert world with a red dying sun and he sees Garak looking at him from a distance that he can never cross with Doctor Parmak standing there, both looking down at him. He doesn’t understand why he sees Doctor Parmak in these dreams. He asks if perhaps they may be symbolic of something and he watches him hesitate.

 

“Doctor?” Julian asks softly. He’s sitting on the couch  right leg pulled under him with his red converse and jeans that he’s come to wear more frequently. The shoes have an interesting feel to them that he likes. Today he’s wearing a hoodie that’s baggie and comfortable. It feels familiar somehow and he likes playing with the drawstrings.

“Hmm?” Doctor Parmak looks up from his notes and there’s a tilt to his head that’s achingly familiar. Doctor Parmak doesn’t sit quite as comfortably as Julian, a slight stoop that Julian can see is from a spine curvature, a slight bulge at the top vertebrae. It’s never appeared to pain him and it doesn’t now, but now as always, he shifts on the big leather chair like it’s his first time sitting in it. Julian scratches at his face, feeling the stubble. He should shave again. _It’s how he knows you best_ , comes the unbidden thought intruding on him again.

 

“I don’t understand what he sees in you,” Julian says though that wasn’t at all what he meant to say. Just like the near kiss, it’s some unconscious action that he doesn’t seem to have any control over. “I’m sorry I don’t... I don’t know what that means,” Julian rushes out, both feet on the floor. The question makes him anxious. “I was... I mean I wasn’t going to ask that I don’t-”

“Ask it,” Doctor Parmak says looking at him speculatively. “You should follow your thoughts. Mmm... it might be the sort of thing you need to seek your answers. The unconscious questions the... human subconscious is a fascinating thing and I would very much like to know what that question means, Julian Bashir.”

“ _I don’t know what the question means”_ is what Julian intends to say. That isn’t what he says. “You have every flaw that I have,” is what comes out instead and he... doesn’t understand what’s happening.

 

Doctor Parmak stops writing when he says that and looks at him with an expression that he can’t read. It’s not... it doesn’t seem to be a pleasant expression. Julian swallows and he ducks his head.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, these things aren’t... it’s like they’re coming from somewhere else and I don’t know what’s going on. Please forgive me. You know the problems with my head...”

“I’m aware of the situation,” Doctor Parmak replies in a level voice. He sets the notepad aside.

“Would it... be better to stop here?” Julian asks starting to rub at the back of his neck.

“I think that it would be best to follow these... thoughts to their natural conclusion.”

“But I don’t... do you... do you and Garak know each other? I... I don’t understand...”

“Continue please. We were ah... speaking of my flaws, I believe you said...” Julian doesn’t immediately answer. He’d like to collect his thoughts but these aren’t even thoughts. They’re words passing his lips from something... outside and he doesn’t have any control over them. Julian opens his mouth and closes it again. He doesn’t know what Doctor Parmak wants from him. “I...”

 

Julian falters but almost jumps when he feels his mouth moving again.

“You’re everything he said was wrong with me. You’re everything he said he could never be with.”

“Elim Garak?” Doctor Parmak asks softly, head ducked, pushing his glasses back up as he studies the floor. “Elim... said that to you?”

“You’re weak like I am...”

“I’m sorry, Julian. I’m nothing like you.”

“You’re soft like I am...”

“I’m sorry, perhaps you hadn’t heard me when I said-”  

“You don’t have enough blood on your hands.”

“You don’t know anything about me, Doctor Bashir.”

“You don’t walk in that darkness either... But you can be with him and I can’t...”

 

Julian stops shortly when he sees Doctor Parmak standing with a loud ugly laugh.

“I can’t...” Doctor Parmak laughs again, his shoulders shaking. “I’m sorry it’s just... Ah... I can picture the things you say Elim saying and I can picture that face same as it is now and it’s... ah... Guls why are you such a child?” He asks his voice switching not from a laugh but to nearly a sob. “A child... a child who understands nothing if you think for a moment that Elim and I are... it’s... it’s just so... juvenile... so... the lurid... stupid... _stupid_ things you must surely be imagining and I... ah hah... ah, Elim the messes you leave for me to clean up for you...”

“Doctor?”

“This petty child’s dream world...” he hears Doctor Parmak say with a tight voice. Doctor Parmak smiles at him wide, that expression stretched like it might shatter any moment. “Mmm... that’s alright though... You don’t understand of course and it’s... you’ll forgive me if I tell you that it’s a personal matter and Elim is certainly capable of handling his own affairs... So ah... how about I just... illustrate the difference between us with a question, rather....”

 

Julian watches Doctor Parmak and somehow hears him whisper under his breath “My dear friend Doctor Bashir”. He’s sure he isn’t meant to hear that as Doctor Parmak picks at his face, pushes at his glasses, staring hard at the floor beneath the couch.

“You find Elim’s eyes beautiful, don’t you? Ah, I’m sure you could look in them forever. Get lost in them see...s-see a sea of blue,” a soft laugh there, “You dream of those eyes and it’s... it’s a comfort to you isn’t it, Doctor Bashir?” Julian nods slowly at the question before realizing that Doctor Parmak isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t understand why he feels so young again where he was so tired before. There’s something there, some lost compassion, some determination that wants to know just what the hell is going on outside- _Outside? Outside of what? The doctor’s office? Who are you Kelas Parmak and what are you to Garak? Why are you so upset? What have I done to you?_

 

“Of course it is,” Doctor Parmak says walking to the center of the room with that speculative tilt of his head returning, his arms out at his sides. “So then in fairness I’ll just say that when I dream of Elim’s eyes... when I dream of his touch...” He holds his arms at the elbows as if there’s a sudden chill in the air, as if just that memory that he describes is too much for him to handle. “...my skin crawls. The bile is in my throat and I wake up screaming. I can’t stop shaking and I can’t stop _screaming_ and I would rip every scale from my body to make it stop, that touch of Garak’s. I’d claw out my eyes like your Jack to never see his face. So you understand when I say that you are mistaken, that you are a fool, and you and I are _nothing_ alike. Good day, Doctor Bashir. I’m afraid I’ll need to recommend that you see someone else but... I promise you that Elim will be back. Computer terminate session.”

 

And Julian watches as he blinks out of existence.

 

\---

 

It’s Doctor Parmak who leaves Julian’s room that night to see Garak in the dark hall. Garak knows it’s Parmak tonight because the moment he sees him he averts his eyes. Sometimes, he’s Kelas. Others he’s Parmak; in front of others he’s always Parmak. He was Parmak earlier today as well, but that can change sometimes if Garak is especially fragile in mind. Still, it’s easier for him to go from Kelas to Parmak than the other way around. Usually it will be a sudden memory, a touch, a look, and that fear is in his eyes. It’s easy to tell because he flinches when Garak touches him and can’t look him in the eyes. Like now, he steps around him uneasily. Garak doesn’t dare come any closer.

 

“You’re going back in there, Elim. You’re going in there and you’re going to bring him back and whatever there is that needs to be worked out between the two of you it’s getting worked out. I’m sorry but I can’t be your intermediary any longer. What was it you said the last time? That you can’t do this anymore. I suppose that makes two of us then.”

“What did he say to you?” Garak asks carefully.

“Nothing that I hadn’t already suspected. Nothing that you’re not already well aware of. Mmm, circumspection is your preference and I should hate to create any unpleasantries with something as vulgar as open dialogue. Please don’t use my first name. I’m not... right tonight.”

“It isn’t necessary to phrase it so cruelly to yourself.”

“The truth is cruel, Elim. That’s why it terrifies you.”

“You know that I would comfort you if I was able to.”

 

Parmak walks past him slowly a foot and then stops with a hand on the wall leaning against it as if the wood can offer more support than Garak can. It can, which only makes Parmak’s words ring more true. The walls pain him less than Garak does in moments like these.

“I know, Elim. That’s why the truth is a cruel thing.” Garak watches him helplessly. Parmak has been his strength since returning. Parmak has been his light. Parmak has been his only comfort in the dark and bitter world. Parmak had said to him once that the ability to offer comfort, to calm, to heal was a far greater treasure than he would ever know but he didn’t imagine it was a sentiment that Garak would ever miss. He was wrong. Not being able to touch Parmak in moments like this is nearly as great as the torture Tain had inflicted on him to cause such a reaction in the first place.

 

Garak doesn’t ask him if there’s anything he can do. There’s nothing. There’s a literal void and he imagines Tain laughing at him buried or better jettisoned into space, into that vacuum, into the nearest star.

“We haven’t found Jack yet,” Garak says softly, “I should set extra security at your quarters at the very least.”

“That won’t be necessary... That is… when you bring Julian back he’ll be here.”

“To kill me,” Garak points out though his life is under constant threat as it stands so he supposes he can pencil Jack in between the woman who keeps writing him about the noise ordinances and the “overly loud Federation monitoring devices” that he needs to remove or face dire consequences, and some old victim with his with a grudge so unremarkable that Garak refuses to allow his memory to hold the man’s name.

“We both know you won’t allow that.” It was unspoken but they both knew that Parmak wouldn’t allow it either.

 

Garak knows that it’s best to leave the silence. He knows that in the morning things will be less tense, less charged. He knows that it’s better for both of them to sleep. He also knows that Parmak has only stopped because walking is a pain and whatever happened in that room he’s barely holding it together. The greatest kindness that Garak could give him would be to absent himself so that Parmak can walk back to his room with the dignity of not falling apart in front of Garak. Kelas Parmak is a treasure that he doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t deserve what Garak says next.

“The two of you are so very much alike, you know” he says stupidly out loud, perhaps age or sentiment making him slip so poorly.

“Bury me,” Parmak hisses with a turn so fast that Garak imagines that thick white braid smacking him in the face. Perhaps he’s tired, perhaps he merely finds the sight of Parmak angry to be unbearably hauntingly familiar. Regardless...

“He has that same fire, you know. That same defiant spirit.”

 

“If he had once, I assure you, Elim, you broke him of it the same as Tain had done to me. Congratulations, son of Tain, he would be quite pleased with you. He might even take you for another ride in the country were he still alive to bear witness to such a glorious triumph. Might I suggest a drink before bed to toast the God you still hold above everything else? Perhaps he might bless you with all that you deserve even from beyond. Ah... right, that was perhaps a touch unkind of me. They say that the truth is unkind. I should call you Saint Elim then. For you are the kindest and most benevolent and like those canonized humans they deem saints also stupidly devoted to pigheaded ignorance and destroying anything that questions their unchallenged authority.”

 

Kelas is beautiful. Kelas, because in moments like this when his pale, blue violet eyes flash with that fury, when he looks at him refusing to forgive, refusing to hold back his anger it’s a truly stunning intimacy. Garak almost reaches out to him but such a thing would impossible tonight. Kelas looks in his eyes almost daring him, that slight tremor as he does affirming that no, tonight would not be a good night for such things. Not that it ever is... ever will be. Parmak turns away from him again, that moment gone.

“Hold out your hand please. I’m sorry, I think it would make my skin crawl if I had to touch you so for all the things I’ve forgiven you in a lifetime Elim, I hope you’ll forgive me that.” Kelas says reaching into his pocket. Garak has to swallow at that because there isn’t enough penance in the universe that should ever allow Parmak to forgive him for what he let Tain do. What he knows he would let him do every time.

“I’ll never forgive those unfortunate sandals you insist on wearing though,” Garak says, the moment between them passing. He holds out his hand and Parmak drops the mobile holo emitter into it crisply.

 

“Jack had told me when we last spoke that Section 31 had let the system infect all of their brains, their neural networks with a series of nanomachines. They weren’t just meant to lay dormant and activate the killswitch. That complex network in all of their brains is the reason that we’re able to use the holoprojector that they’d given us to see Julian’s dreamworld and manifest it. That wasn’t the original intention of course.” Parmak stops, knowing that Garak will know exactly what the true implications are. Section 31 didn’t want such things for entertainment. They wanted them for compliance. If they could pull any one of the augments, pull that consciousness from their bodies into existence, they could torture them for hours, for days, for years should they choose without damaging the body or the brain. The psyche was another matter, but they could do anything they wanted with that sort of access. Garak looks at it carefully. He doesn’t imagine that Jack would have given it freely.

 

“I stole it from him,” Parmak answers the unspoken question, an equally unspoken but no less understood “for you” hanging at the end of that sentence. “Do with it what you will. I’m not going back in there. That is perhaps... the one thing that I will not do for you... You understand... I trust...”

“If there is any trust you still hold in me, my dear.”

“I don’t trust that I’m particularly dear to you in that fashion when such things are impossible but...  Goodnight Elim. Maybe I’ll say a prayer to the slug slithering amongst the ancients that tomorrow I’ll wake up and be your Kelas again...”

 

_“Before you replace me...”_

 

Garak stares at his retreating back the holo emitter in his hand squeezed as tightly as his eyes as turns the opposite way.

 

_(We stand, we stand, we can’t stand to fall down)_

_Here comes another_

_(We stand, we stand, we can’t stand to fall down)_

_Don’t pull me under_

_-Butterfly Boucher “It Pulls Me Under”_

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garak meets the other Julian and Parmak encounters Jack in his lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember the angst tag? >>  
> <<

_I swoon, upon my knees come crashing_

_Will you bury me?_

_Today, this small favor I am asking_

_Hold me, you may drop me tomorrow_

 

Garak doesn’t use the holo emitter right away. It’s late and he tells himself there’s no great rush in spite of Jack’s impatience. He decides to skip his medication that night – a foolhardy thing given that there’s no one to reach out to – hating how dulled out it leaves him. Another crisis averted, his deputy actually performing adequately in fighting the fires and of course he has meetings, a speech to give commiserating one of the more ambitious joint exchange programs at the main Science Academy in Central. He plans the time then. It will be before dinner. It will be before he sits down to dinner across from Parmak to see which doctor will be joining him that evening. It will be as little time as possible for him to sit in anticipation of seeing the proper Julian, of hearing the voice teasing him, cutting, brilliant, those eyes watching him once more eagerly drinking in everything that he says like it’s the most fascinating thing that he’s ever heard.

 

It will be nice to look into eyes that don’t flinch away at his look and he hates himself the moment that he thinks it.

 

Kelas Parmak has given everything not just for Garak but for Cardassia. If it were up to Garak there would be a monument in every city center honoring the doctor behind the Castellan. There would be poetry, there would be songs, there would be a tribute to the man who faced him, who faced Tain, the Dominion, everyone who ever stood in front of him and never wavered in the conviction of his beliefs, in his desire to heal, to save the Cardassian people, to stare down a thing masquerading as a proper State and call it foul to its face. Kelas deserves far better than Garak has ever been able to give him, and if he has one flaw it’s perhaps that he’s always been too stupidly sentimental to see it. Garak had once suggested that if he was staying out of some misguided obligation that it wasn’t necessary since it was clear that Garak’s very presence triggered that conditioning that could never be quite eradicated from his mind.

 

That had earned him a glass of kanar to the face and he thought for just a moment that he and Kelas might be able to…

 

Garak sighs as he sits on the hard seat at the desk in his room. Last night the dreams had been especially terrible. They weren’t just dreams of the fires but dreams of those flames engulfing Julian, Kelas, Tain standing atop a pile of bones tossing sweet fried pop beetles from a large basket onto them. Garak dreamt that when he reached out to touch Kelas and pull him from the fire that his body turned to cinders beneath his fingers as he screamed and begged Garak not to touch him. Garak isn’t often haunted by the screams of those he interrogated. If he were being honest, most of them have only ever amounted to little but background noise. But he hears Kelas screaming in his head… _“Stay back… don’t touch me… get away from me!”_ so frequently, sometimes it’s hard to realize that he isn’t back in that room looking across at him shaking, trembling, seeing him try to speak but failing. Tain was the master of induced illusions and nowhere else remained such a living testament to that perfected technique better than Kelas Parmak.

 

If he was a better man, Garak would let him go instead of selfishly holding him close, no matter what Parmak may say to him in return. But Garak has never been a hero. He never imagined himself to be anything but a part of a working machine breathing life into Cardassia to sustain it. Back then he was the arms, he was the knife in the darkness keeping safety and watch. He was the on trusted to strike where no others could be counted on. He was the one to strike the poisoned wound and draw the venom out. Now he’s been entrusted to be the heart of Cardassia and he feels that he’ll forever be unworthy. Garak has been unworthy of a lot of things in his life; Tain’s refusal to acknowledge him as a son proof enough of that. He still dreams that one day he’ll step in front of the crowd and every one of them will brand him a traitor, call him the son of a whore, and turn their backs to him.

 

Like Julian had.

 

Like Julian has spent a lifetime doing while Garak holds out a hand to empty air. He’s still grabbing at the air. He’s still forgetting how to breathe when Julian looks at him as if twenty years and the personification of Garak’s failure don’t stand inexorably between them. _What are you doing, Elim? You’re sitting here like a group of foolish children thinking to summon Oralius to tell them the secrets of the universe. Bashir isn’t a deity, he isn’t one of those mythical human creatures bathed in light who will rescue your soul from the darkness. He’s a man as fallible as you are who’s never thought of you as anything other than a friend, and likely not even that._ Garak sighs as he turns the device over in his palm. Kelas deserves better than the existence that Tain and Garak have swept into a pitiful pile of dead scales for him. He’s going to give it back, and he’s going to tell the augment that he’s going to need to hunt his fairytales elsewhere..

 

Until he activates the mobile emitter and sees Julian standing before him the same as he was when they parted on Deep Space Nine.

 

“Garak?” Julian asks looking confused, standing there in his uniform looking almost as young as he had the day they met in the Replimat. Gark immediately thinks this was a terrible idea. “Where’s Jack?” asked with a searching expression around Garak as if he doesn’t exist. Yes, this was an absolutely awful idea. “Why isn’t Jack here?” Julian asks again, brushing past him, surprisingly generating a cold breeze. Impulsively, Garak reaches out to grab his shoulder and finds his hand settling there with such familiarity it even makes his jaw hurt. “Why isn’t Jack here?” Julian repeats, staring at him the same way that husband and wife would ask the interrogator, the same way the child would ask. _What have you done to them? When can I see them? How can you stand there so calmly? Because those of us in the Order are nothing but instruments, that’s why. Because we’re nothing but artificial constructs tasked with mindlessly serving our masters. Isn’t that what you’d said to me, Julian?_

 

The device is malfunctioning. It has to be because he doesn’t understand why Julian is wavering in his vision the way that he is.

“You haven’t hurt him?” Julian asks again, Garak the interrogator the only one that he’s seeing. Julian wavers a little more in his vision. Perhaps it’s the bright lights. It has to be, because why else would every damn mention of Jack make Julian appear to- “Please, Garak. Jack… Jack is still my… still my husband and-”

“You’ll forgive my confusion, my dear doctor, the last I recall you were married to the blonde former mute, not the psychopath with the mustache.” The words are a sudden and caustic snap, out before he thinks about them. Julian stares back at him silently before looking away.

 

“I married them both,” Julian answers defiant, looking back while it’s Garak’s turn to fold. “Why does it matter anyway? You’ve got Parmak. You’ve got the _appropriate_ doctor. You’re ruler of the bloody empire you were willing to torture and murder for. You’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted. Congratulations.” Garak feels his jaw clench, his eyes falling to the cold and empty made, made up nicely by his housekeeper.

“Of course. Forgive me, I would imagine the loss of one of your precious augment harem must still pain your heart but surely the other three are more than enough to soothe that wound.” Julian’s eyes narrow. Garak doesn’t know how he knows but he can _feel_ it without even looking.

 

“You think I’m _fucking_ all of them?”

“I think that I’m a member of an increasingly short list, and I think that your _husband_ is far better equipped to deal with whatever mental prison you’ve childishly locked yourself into than a _former_ friend who isn’t even worthy of a regular correspondence.” That bitterness leaves an unpleasant taste. It nearly surprises Garak when he feels the brush of the hologram to his upper arm. The touch is warm, welcome, Julian’s earnest eyes trying to draw him back in and drown him in that sickening ocular poison. Garak was wrong when he told himself that the broken Julian was the cruelest trick the Ancients could play on him. This one is far worse.

 

“If we’re not friends any longer, Garak, it isn’t because I wanted things that way.” _Yes, and here we come to those looks from your other self. We come to the conversation with Jack. We come to a myriad of little hints hinting at some imagined secondary plot, Elim._ They come to nonsense is what they come to. Garak’s instinct is to take a step back. He forces himself forward, Julian’s warmth radiating as if he were really there.

“And did you come to this life altering conclusion before or after you decided to sleep with the ghost of your dead friend while my homeworld was burning?” Garak asks, seeing the angry flare of Julian’s nostrils. He doesn’t retreat either.

“It might have been after you decided to sleep with the daughter of your enemy while my whole damn life was falling apart!” he shouts back, and Garak doesn’t even waste his breath disabusing him of his irrational theories and childish jealousy.

“Yes, how trying for you, forced to endure your entire life walking amongst us lesser creatures.”

 

“There! There, you’re doing it again, you and everyone else, looking at me like a bloody insect under a glass, acting like I’m not even a person, acting like a thing, an “it”. Maybe I thought you of all people might understand how it feels to be looked at like a monster but clearly I was wrong, clearly you _revel_ in it!” Garak can feel his pulse racing, can feel that rage stealing his breath, rage like he hasn’t felt in years coming to the surface. It’s the emotion that threatens to swallow him like a frog’s sticky mouth pulling at his scales until it rips them off. Tain always told him that he shouldn’t operate with that anger, that he should be a calm sea, that his rage, that his lust, they would all lead to his ruin. And now, as always with his failures spitting back at him cruelly he hears Tain telling him that he was right. Of course. Tain is always right.

 

“There’s that vaunted augment perception hard at work I see! Section 31 must have nurtured your keen insight to razor sharp precision Guls, you’ve unmasked me, the great doctor Bashir has seen through my clever ruse.” He swallows a break in his voice, remembering that confrontation so many years ago when the little Trill forced him to his knees, forced that emotion to the surface. He’s never forgiven himself that weakness in front of the enemy though she may never have realized. Garak thinks that his jaw might break, he thinks that the weight of every damn miserable thing wrong in his life threatening to crush him. He buries it. He buries it so deep that it will never see sunlight. “Why else do you think I’ve kept my beloved Kelas by my side all these years? Why should I bed the man who I tortured, who I broke, who wakes up with nightmares of me, who cannot bear my touch, who screams when he beholds my face in the morning? Why, my dear? Because it _excites_ me. Because I get off on it,” Garak hisses at him.

 

He sees Julian holds his gaze, sees his face pale, and then sees him look down. He seems to age before Garak’s eyes, not the plucky young officer, but his eyes tired, his face more lined, hair gray, that beard growing in.

“You know, I once wanted to understand you so badly. I once wanted…  I… I read more than what you’d suggested. I read a lot, so much… so… so much that you never knew, that you never realized… I read Vorak’s Immortal State. That’s one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. _‘If being killed makes me beautiful, then my murdered self will be loved by you for all time. And then because you love me, each time that I die for you I will be reborn more beautiful than the last.’_ ” Julian is trembling as he speaks the words and Garak finds his lips moving along. Julian spoke the words in Kardasi, and Garak wonders when and why he ever bothered to learn it. “That was when I realized it, looking back to the Never Ending Sacrifice, it all made sense.”

There’s a bitter laugh that follows that, a shake of Julian’s head, his mouth turned down ugly and twisted, a twitch of his nose as if his sinuses might be burning.

“It all made perfect sense. It did then and it does now.”

“And that would be?”

“That there’s no world in which you and I could ever be together. That there’s no world where I’ll ever be enough for you.” And with that, Garak realizes that Julian has the holo emitter in his palm. “Goodbye, Garak. If there is a hell, I only hope that you leave me to rot in it this time.” The metal gives a dying chirp before being crushed beneath his grip, Garak too slow to grab for it. As the device drops to the ground broken, he swears he hears Julian echo in his mind from years ago, one of the last times they’d spoken.

 

_“Sometimes I think of you as Orpheus, Garak. There was a legend that his beloved Eurydice was bitten by a viper and died. And Orpheus travelled to the Underworld, his voice charming the nymphs and deities until they wept and allowed him to retrieve her. The only condition was that she follow him out of Hades, with him agreeing to never turn around until they were free. That’s you, Garak. You’d never save me. You’d never have enough trust not to turn around. And every time I’d be damned.”_

 

No, Garak thinks as he feels the wetness track down his face stupidly. He’s the one who’s damned.

 

\---

 

     He can’t sleep. That’s not unusual. Parmak doesn’t usually sleep soundly. It isn’t so much the dreams. Some of his worst nightmares have brought him his most restful nights, waking with a start, that rush of adrenaline kicking him into wakefulness. Those are the days that he’s the most alive and the most vibrant. The days after the nightmares usually force Tain’s conditioning to the forefront and they make it difficult to see Garak, difficult to be near him. He usually avoids Garak on those days and that’s when he’s able to be the most productive. It looks like tonight is going to be one of those nights, he thinks as he sits up in his bed with a sigh. His back aches when he stands, and though he doesn’t like wasting the time, he still goes through the meditative poses to try and ease some of the tightness in his muscles. Sometimes it works, sometimes his back still tenses tight and painful. Tonight, he can feel that tension ease and be breathes out slowly, putting the long white coat on over his long sleeveless shift.

     He supposes that he might get on Garak too much for overworking himself when he’s little better, but his fits of mania tend to encompass the darker hours, while Garak is in the throes of some nightmare of another. A lot of those nights all Parmak can do is watch him from the large chair next to the bed, one hand trembling as it reaches out, the other over his mouth to hold back the bile as he tries to offer what little comfort he can. A part of him had been hopeful that the plateau was finally beginning to be overcome. He had reached a certain level of comfort with Garak between the “episodes” as he called them, but they were horribly constant once that had been achieved. His ability to look at Garak or hold him when he’d been left shaken from Julian’s presence were a rare and treasured gift.

     _Ah, but gifts from the Sky Serpents are rescinded as freely as they are given_ , his mother used to say to him as a child, whenever he’d lament the failings of his physical body. Sometimes she would say it when he would be too prideful in his mind as well. Well, his mind is his one source of pride and it’s been the one thing which he could rely on not to disappoint him; at least it was before he met Elim Garak but… Parmak sighs. He needs to get to work so that he can distract himself from his own intrusive thoughts. He knows that Garak fancies himself a burden with his attacks and his disquieted mind, but Garak always has been rather foolishly self-absorbed with those sorts of thoughts. Garak is a challenge perhaps, but never a burden.

     Parmak carefully shuffles down the stairs, hands along the wall. He’s fallen down them before and he’s sure he will again, but tonight it would be poor timing given the climate. He’s also not inclined to have Garak scold him on his penchant for wandering barefoot where the slick old stone steps are concerned. The rest of his lab is rebuilt, modern save for those ancient stairs, and at the bottom he enters the code for primary entry. The door swings open, bright lights adjusting after reading the dilation of his pupils, and he’s thankful they dim down for his night acclimated eyes. It’s then that he notices Jack standing there- or rather Jack flitting about the room like an agitated bird. He also notices that Jack is holding one of the more important samples from his locked store and he frowns.

     “No one ever suspects the butterfly, hm?” Jack asks by way of greeting and Parmak doesn’t need to feign ignorance. He’s talking about the mobile emitter of course.

“Are butterflies a literary symbol on your world for crippled old men?” Parmak winces as Jack lightly plinks the vial idly.

“Butterflies are the rebirth of the soul. If you believe in the soul, if you believe like Descartes in that intangible thinking man that I am because I think except I… I should be double a man thinking double or triple. But there’s only one Jack, one Julian, no holy trinity because…” Jack looks about to drop the vial, but instead sets it back hard with a harsh breath out. “The trinity is dead. God is dead. In 60 billion years we’ll be scattered stardust and the vacuum won’t allow us to scream.” He brings a hand to his mouth again and stops himself with a small tic. His lips move whispering something softly, but Parmak can’t hear him.

Parmak considers the holo emitter and considers Julian. He considers his next words, considers Garak and the way that his eyes tracked over the sleeping Julian. He puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder as he approaches slowly, feeling the tension beneath his fingers. Garak said so many times that the augment is dangerous. Parmak had then asked him what his basis for comparison was. Was the danger any greater than say the operatives who’d begun ripping the scales out of his neck? Or was the danger any greater than the overseers of the camps looking for any reason to put the pain stick to crippled Nokaran dissident? Parmak thought that such words were far less kind than he normally allowed himself to speak, and he took no pleasure in the pain and guilt that flashed across Garak’s face when he’d softly and thoughtlessly murmured them.

 

“If the trinity is dead, then why try and bring any part of it back? We ah… have a saying in the North. We say “one cannot bite snow.” That is, there are some things of this world which can only be beheld by a certain set of senses before they disappear. Or perhaps we might also say that “dreams are of the dead”.” Parmak doesn’t explain that one. It was a favorite of his mother’s when he’d tell her of his hope that one day he might wake up and be something other than the creature that he was. They did not hope, she would say. They served and they lived. They were born to laugh only a few fleeting moments through the winter, blooming violet like the crocus through the snow, dying if exposed to too much light. _Ah, right, encourage him to take Julian back, not to leave without him. Perhaps you truly are hopeless, as Elim says, Kelas._ He realizes that his hand is lingering, that Jack breathing deeply and deliberately beneath his touch, forcing himself to remain still while Parmak takes a seat on the wooden stool.

 

“You don’t need to stay there for my sake. That would be Elim’s penance,” he mutters, seeing Jack’s eye flick to his hand. Jack stares at it curiously, as if just noticing that a bird hand landed and perched.

“This is…” swallow. “This is fine… this is fine. This is… I… d-don’t… people don’t touch me. You don’t understand, you don’t understand that your hands are… _why do I know them, as if, before being, they travelled my forehead?_ ”

“I’m… sorry?” He doesn’t quite understand. Or rather, he thinks that he understands from the few conversations that he’s had with Jack unbeknownst to Garak. Jack speaks in abstracts, in poetry, in literature. People are afraid of him. People don’t approach him. “Ah… you’re not being literal. My apologies.”

 

“I like being near you. It calms my head… c-calms the buzzing. It’s comforting without being that Incorrect silence.”

“It’s funny you say that… I’ve never found my own company to be much of a comfort.”

“Hm well... Usually that’s only J-julian that does that.”

“Ah, yes, one ‘beautiful broken doctor’ to another.”

“You’re nothing like Julian,” Jack says with a look to him that says it should be obvious.

“I don’t have the emitter,” Parmak adds, not moving his hand. He doesn’t know why, but he studies Jack’s face as Jack studies him with that one wide hazel eye. He studies the curious human facial hair and the downturned mouth that he’s yet to see smile. It’s strange because it was his understanding that smiling was a common custom amongst humans. The same with physical contact. Humans are also more conciliatory. Jack isn’t like any human that he’s ever met.

 

“I know that. Why would you have the emitter? Why would you want to talk to Julian? You don’t like Julian. Clearly you gave it to the master Morlock.”

“I don’t understand if you know I don’t have it then why are you here?”

“Weren’t you listening? I told you, you make all of it stop. You’re silent but it’s… it’s good silence. It’s not too bright here.” Parmak goes to move his hand from Jack’s shoulder when he too takes a seat. Jack holds his hand there. “Stay there like that I… _I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone… and all I lov’d I lov’d alone…_ ”

“Jack?” Parmak asks softly, stuck seated looking ahead to the display of the computer monitor.

 

But he sees that Jack is already asleep.

 

_For a change I’ll refrain from hiding all of me from you_

_(Here's my lullaby)_

_Pray for rain, lose your name_

_And watch all your dreams fall through_

_(Hush now don't you cry)_

_-AFI “The Interview”_

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parmak and Jack share a moment unknowingly witnessed at its conclusion by Garak while Julian's dreamworld begins to break open.

_ Warn your warmth to turn away _

_ Here, it's December every day (I like that) _

_ Press your lips to the sculptures _

_ And surely, you'll stay (love like winter) _

_ For of sugar and ice _

_ I am made, I am made _

  
  


In four hours he wakes and realizes that it’s his head resting on Jack’s shoulder now, Jack awake, fingers softly typing on the keys one handed, thumb his his mouth, a study of concentration. The moment that Parmak’s eyes settle on him, he sees a jerk of the hand away from his mouth with a long breath out.

“That’s not necessary,” Parmak says, sitting up straight as he’s able with a wince. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“It isn’t Correct,” Jack mumbles as his hand stops on the keys. There’s a compulsive wipe of his hand over his pants over and over as Parmak adjusts his glasses and looks at the monitor. He blinks when he sees it.

“You-”

 

“I fixed it for you,” Jack answers, not looking at him. “See you, you didn’t account for that protein structure and I remember…” Jack doesn’t look at him, instead staring straight ahead, and now that he’s stopped, Parmak feels the agitated bounce of his leg. “You know I I wanted to be a doctor once. Couldn’t. Forbidden, not Allowed by the Federation but now I…  _ I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom… but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it… _ ”

“I’m not much of a teacher, I’m afraid. As you can see, it would seem that I cannot even fix my own poor broken brain.”

“Why fix it?” Jack asks with a shrug and a bite - seemingly defiant - of his finger. “ _ By God, if I ever cracked, I’d try to make the world crack with me. _ ”

 

“Then why do you keep pulling your finger out of your mouth?” Parmak asks smartly, pushing his glasses up, still marvelling that he thinks he might actually be able to falsely induce the mental state which had-

“Maybe I won’t hm,” Jack says around that finger as he types a few more keys over Parmak’s fingers. “Maybe I’ll I’ll just leave it there until it rots off mmhm, An offering of body.”

“One doesn’t barter with the gods, with the State. One doesn’t appeal, one merely serves.” But then, if he truly believed that shouldn’t he let his penance stand? Shouldn’t he abandon this silly idea of bringing himself back to Garak? Of erasing Tain’s mark? Parmak sighs as he watches Jack’s mouth turn down, watch his teeth nibble, his head turn, his hazel eye still bright, snow white dusted auburn hair thrown back from his face.

 

“There’s another way to do this you know mmhm,” Jack says suddenly. “The mainframe is down, and  _ when falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls- the world. _ But… but they were wrong… Julian and I made it out... Like Apocalypse - Patrick loved Xmen mmhm - but from a single atom can be regenerated…” He trails off and Parmak confirms in that moment what he perhaps should have suspected all along.  _ The trinity is dead. The other Augments are dead.  _ It’s only Jack and Julian after all at the end of the world, at the end of their own fire come through burned and scarred like all of them. “But you’re not a mutant, not hunted by the Sentinels, not one of us and… and  your brain is more compatible than a basic’s but it would still probably kill you. And it… wouldn’t be quiet hm, it’s a buzz, a constant hum not always mellow wedding bells but brazen Alarum!”

 

Parmak laughs softly as he stands up.

“Do you think I would be working on this formulation, this psychedelic induction if I was concerned for my life? You’ve clearly gone over everything, ‘Doctor Merriweather’. You know just as well as I do that the odds of fatal cerebral hemorrhage are sixty percent.”

“Fifty now,” Jack corrects looking at him with a turn of his head more the jerk of an aging automaton. “Fifty percent isn’t a logical risk for… for the lying Morlock who’s only dreaming of Bashir.” The slip is a curious one, and Parmak sees Jack shut his eyes after he says it and Parmak wonders-

“The link is breaking down, isn’t it?” he asks brilliantly, even as he feels that adrenaline wearing off with the fatigue of little bit of sleep coming back. “That connection. You said you had to sever it from the Mainframe. That’s not all is it?”

 

Jack is silent as he continues working, head down, crawling onto the top of the table to sit cross legged, closer to the screen.

“You should sleep. I’ll work, finish this. Forty percent, thirty percent, it can be improved. Lauren said I… I wasn’t a surgeon, wasn’t a doctor but I could have been. Could’ve been better than Bashir, could’ve won a dozen Carringtons could’ve should’ve  _ de profundis domine dum spiro spero… _ ” comes the whisper as Parmak shuffles back over with a sigh. It would seem that they’re both hopeless. 

“You don’t think you should sleep too then? I promise you with all the years of work another night won’t make much difference.”

“I don’t sleep,” Jack answers flatly and another jerking motion of his hand to the back of the neck where Parmak sees the faint scar. He stops when he sees it.

 

So he was awake that whole time?

 

Parmak remembers treating a woman after The Fire who’d blinded herself so that she would no longer see the destruction behind her eyes. And when that hadn’t worked she tried to have him cut it out of her head. She’d mutilated herself so badly with the scalpel that she’d died that night. The scar is precise, small, neat, and Jack’s words haunt him. A hand goes to that shoulder again and he wonders just what he’s doing. Even if Jack doesn’t understand the gesture he shouldn’t be making it. Parmak sees the tension go out of Jack’s shoulders, sees the comfort that it brings him, the way his head tips to the touch with a breath and it reminds him so painfully that he can’t do the same for Garak. 

 

“I do,” he says, wondering just what in the name of the Sky Serpents he’s doing. 

“I… I don’t do  _ that _ either,” is snapped quickly, Jack’s hand going over his to move it away.

“I wasn’t asking you to,” he says with another yawn.

“Oh…” Understanding that Parmak only  _ is _ asking for company, for warmth though he still looks suspicious as he demurs. “Oh then I… I’ll probably keep you awake. I talk- talk books, novels, kept Julian up some nights but Sarina always liked it mmhm.” He’s back to “Julian” again, Parmak notes curiously as he steps back.

“Books?” He sees Jack uncoil from the table and slip off of it, arms crossed tightly now, biting his finger again, looking far younger in stature than he had when he first came.

 

“I don’t forget things. Anything. Ever. And it’s… it’s too quiet at night,” he practically whispers. “It’s the Wrong kind of quiet the kind of quiet not your quiet.”   _ Poor boy, _ Parmak thinks.  _ How much of that control forced in him was because of Julian’s influence? _

“So then you’ll tell me a story?” Parmak asks amused, stumbling over his own foot as he becomes lost in thoughts, as he chides himself for thoughtlessly reaching out a hand to another stray. He catches himself on the wall, wincing at the strain on his back. He nearly starts when he feels Jack’s arms around him, so many years knowing that sudden physical contact is death, is pain but… fighting back that tension for Jack’s sake. He feels his heart racing when Jack picks him up and carries him up the stairs, speaking softly, in Kardasi directly, he notes when he catches an odd choice of phrase.

 

“ _ In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster…” _

 

And then, he sleeps.

 

\---

 

If Garak is damned then Kelas is coming with him. Kelas had once said (The first time that he knew him as Kelas and not Doctor Parmak) in a moment of anger, that the State gave birth to its lying snake of a son to drag those it deemed unworthy to the underground to be crushed by the darkness.

 

They came together hard and fast that first night, and that was when Garak realized that in spite of the rumors the doctor was  _ not _ Tain’s toy after all.

 

It will pain him, it will bring him to the edge, may very well set him over it to see Garak tonight, but Garak needs him. Garak needs him and he knows if he knocks on Kelas’ door it will open. He knows if he asks, if he asks forgiveness soft, eyes down, tells him that there’s no one else who can comfort him that Kelas will swallow that bile, will shut his eyes tightly and open his arms to embrace him no matter how torturous. Kelas will forgive him even as it rips him apart and there are nights where that brings Garak a pain that he can’t stomach but… tonight is not one of them. Tonight he needs to know that no matter how cursed their union that Kelas will-

 

Garak stops himself at the doorway to the hall, frozen, never feeling more commiserate with Kelas than he does now. Bile, shaking, dizziness grip him and he takes a soft step back into his room to mask his presence from the Augment, a hand over his mouth because he…  _ he _ , Elim Garak, Castellan, Spy, Interrogator,  _ Murderer _ … might not be able to catch the sob burbling his his throat, growing, a nauseating bubble growing larger until he either screams or vomits where he stands. 

 

“ _ Maybe I’ll say a prayer to the slug slithering amongst the ancients that tomorrow I’ll wake up and be your Kelas again...”  _

 

It echoes, that ever present memory, swirling in his head, overlaid with the voice some eighty years past as they lay intertwined scratched, spent, breathing heavily with their _chufas_ touching _“shall I be your Kelas tomorrow when I wake up, Elim? Where tonight I’m Tain’s Parmak?”_ He’d stopped being Tain’s Parmak that night, to tease that Garak would only want him as long as he and his mouth were of some use… Garak doesn’t know that Kelas ever realized a day what he ever truly was to him. He doesn’t know that _he_ ever realized a day what Kelas truly was to him beside a steady and familiar companion welcoming him back home from that human concept of Hell. Not until now that is.

 

Garak sees Jack carrying him up the stairs cradled to his chest like a breeze would break him… break them both.

 

_ “That’s you, Garak. You’d never save me…” _

 

No, he wouldn’t, would he?

 

Garak has never saved anyone.

 

And yet when the door closes, Garak is flying down the stairs to Julian’s room.

 

\---

 

_ Julian dreams of the space station again, only this time he dreams in color, dreams with names. The faces come into view. The cold comes back to him but it’s a chill that’s familiar. It’s a chill that’s home. In his dream like all dreams he passes through like a pitiful shade, the people walking through him, not seeing him, not hearing him as he calls out “Jadzia!” perhaps louder than any other, not knowing why the desperation to catch that brown haired woman (Trill? What’s that? Like music?) He doesn’t understand as it spins and spins around him, that lizard man, that Garak who’d abandoned him walking away always just out of his grasp no matter how far he runs, no matter how fast he tries to make his damn useless Augment muscles (Augment? I don’t understand…) move. _

 

_ “Why is it that no matter how fast I go, how deep down I sink I can never measure up to what you want?” _

 

_ He doesn’t understand where that thought comes from suddenly. It comes like a memory but it doesn’t make any sense because the memories he’s recovered are only of his wife, only of Sarina smiling at him before his… before his accident. _

 

_ Except now there are other that he passes by chasing the lizard man around the dimly lit habitat ring. He passes the doors and sees a man with a mustache smiling at him and he hears Jack? He sees a door with an auburn haired woman grinning at him seductively hearing Lauren? He passes an older white haired man looking up from a massive three dimensional puzzle hearing Patrick? And then he sees Sarina but she’s wearing a uniform. A… Starfleet uniform? Section 31?  _

 

_ Julian feels a pain shooting through his head as he sees Garak moving farther away and he feels his throat vibrate, hears himself screaming “why am I never enough for you?!” Why isn’t he?... “How far into the darkness do I need to go for you Garak?! How much of me do I need to stain with blood to be worthy of you?!” _

 

_ See Garak, I’ve given everything to the bloody State too! _

_ I let them rip everything out of me and put it back for you! _

_ And now you’re with him?! _

_ That should’ve been me, Garak! _

 

_ Julian runs past the last door seeing another woman with short dark hair and spots dotting her skin. She smiles at him and he hears Ezri before he stops with another whisper of “Jadzia”, the smile changing to a frown as the hall turns to gray and the portraits freeze. _

 

_ Julian remembers. _

_ He hadn’t whispered “Jadzia” though that was what he’d told her. _

_ It was “Garak” that had passed his lips. _

 

“Garak!” he wakes with a start, the apartment hot, too hot, the heater acting up again, though it’s a far cry from the halfway house where he started. It’s a far cry from that hospital bed and the  _ smell _ of sickness. It’s better. It’s improvement. Recovery, isn’t that what Doctor Parmak had called it?

 

Doctor… Parmak?

 

Why is that name so much more familiar now?

 

He hasn’t seen Doctor Parmak. He hasn’t seen Garak as the flowers of spring have started to bloom and he’s begun to remember bits and pieces of what he might have once known, preganglionic fiber and postganglionic nerve echoing strangely in his head like a mantra, a chant of the Ancients (Ancients?) knowing that somehow They could never know… could never find out that he- But it slips away again as his legs tangle in the sheets and his knees draw up, forehead hitting them hard with a soft whimper. He doesn’t know how long he remains like that sure he’s going to be too tired for his shift, sure that his interview hangs in the balance because he’s finally remembered enough that he can… that he can get back to… to...

 

Julian feels a pain in his head, heart still hammering hard in his chest when he hears the doorbell. He wonders if he was screaming again? He think about it as he tries to remember where he left his robe. Zelda, his new neighbor a woman of few kind words, had complained about that the one day, but- There’s a knocking, a frantic pounding that follows and he wonders if the building isn’t on fire which would be dreadful because he’s still in his t shirt and shorts and Zelda might be a miserable old bird but he’d still feel obliged to see to her as well and that’d probably give her something else to be cross about but-

“Alright alright I’m coming!” he yells as he rushes to the door about to throw it open.

 

Julian stops, and swallows, and doesn’t know why he says instead “Enter.”

 

The door doesn’t swing open, but instead slides. He hears a noise, familiar but still escaping him. The room flickers from the dim light of the light afternoon to the low light of the Station (Station again?) with the window outside bathed in starlight as he looks ahead. His living room is like static on an old television going from the secondhand LaZBoy to some love modern number. The rug changes, the room an ocean and his eyes blinking from blurry to clear as he reaches up to feel for his glasses only to find they aren’t on his face. Julian blinks again and that’s when he realizes...

 

It’s not the building on fire after all

 

Its Garak, standing there breathing hard, half dressed in some sort of dark tunic, half off a shoulder, hair mussed, eyes wild and desperate as they look at one another from that brief distance of doorway separating them, not even seeming to notice the room shifting as he takes one large stride inside, Julian already having approached the threshold everything in his head screaming  _ you came back you came back! _ He opens his mouth, shuts it again, some croak of “I...” dying in his throat as he feels the world dying around him because for just one moment he thinks that he…

 

_ “Garak…” _ he breathes as if its his last breath on Earth, one last staggered step from a body that no longer feels broken.  _ “Garak…” _ he whispers again with a hand held up, palm to palm, mirror mirror dancing, falling through the pool as their heads turn without any more words spoken, mouths crashing together like the wild vortex outside Deep Space Nine.

 

And suddenly, Julian’s the one on fire.

 

_ (It's in the blood _

_ It's in the blood) _

_ I met my love before I was born _

_ (He wanted love _

_ I taste of blood) _

_ He bit my lip, and drank my war _

_ From years before, from years before _

-AFI  _ “Love Like Winter” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, officially caught up to the current Tumblr point (with an addition at the end that differs from that original post) but I may end up cheating and working on the next bit sooner rather than later because it's going to be dynamite. Stay tuned!


End file.
